To What Extent Do Different Electoral Systems Produce Different Outcomes?

The AMS and FPTP are voting systems in use for the Scottish Parliament and House of Commons elections respectively. It can be argued that AMS gives voters more choice and better representation than FPTP, and in order to assess the validity of this argument 3 key indicators must be analysed: constituency links; proportionality and representation of smaller parties.

This would have given the UKIP around 19 seats, resulting in significance influence over legislature in Parliament. For example, under Party List, in the 2014 European elections, UKIP won 33% of the seats, after gaining 27% of the vote, giving them significant power in the EU Parliament, representing Britain. Consequently, FPTP should continue to be used for elections to the House of Commons, in order to significantly limit the power of extremist parties in Parliament, thus reducing the effect on legislation.

AMS gives more choice than FPTP. In AMS you get 2 votes one for your regional list MSP for example a regional area us Lothian and 1 vote for your constituency MSP for example Edinburgh West is a constituency. For Example Colin Keir was elected the MSP for Edinburgh West and he serves as our local MSP and a regional list MSP is Margo McDonald for Lothian’s along with 7 other regional MSPs. However in most cases your regional list MSP is not elected directly by the voter as if the party gets a percentage of the votes the party can pick a representative from the list and people will not get to pick them thus not being representative of people’s views giving power to the party not its people.

Basically, voters select one candidate from their riding, just like in an SMP system, but they also place a vote for which party they would like to form the government. This second vote determines the amount of seats that each party gains proportional to the amount of votes they collected in the countries. The representatives from each party are then made up of the elected representatives from each riding (if that party was able to elect any) and other members selected by the leader1. An STV system, which is what the Citizen’s Assembly recommended to the people of BC, can be found in Ireland, Malta, and in some levels of government in Australia. Voters rank candidates according to their priorities, choosing as many as they wish. For example, a certain voter could select a Conservative as his or her first choice, a Liberal as the second, a New Democrat as third, and then cast no votes for the Green Party. When each a candidate reaches a certain quota of first place votes, they are elected, and the extra first place votes that they did not need are distributed to the other parties according to their overall ranking. If a second candidate is then elected, his or her extra votes are then distributed to the remaining parties, and so on . This system is rather complicated, especially when compared to our current system, but computerized voting systems have generally alleviated any problems.

which are proportional to the shares of votes in parliament, but it still is the best electoral system for the UK general elections. There are limitless reasons for this which has already been stated in this essay. Referring back to hung parliaments, under first- past-the-post system we have been governed under a coalition government twice, but systems such as the AV system would be more likely to

The main reason why this system is unfair is because each riding is won by the candidate who receives the most votes, even if that candidate receives less than half of the constituency. Therefore, it is possible for a political party to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons. A disadvantage of FPTP voting is that a small increase in the number of votes a party's candidate receives results in a larger increase in the number of seats that party's candidate wins. For example, in the 2011 federal election the Conservative Party received 39.62% of the total votes but won 54% of the seats, while the NDP captured 30.63% of the total votes, but received only 33.12% seats. Smaller parties are affected

For the overall comparison, the strength of Multimember districts falls more on effectiveness of reflecting administrative divisions because there is a flexibility to the numbers of representatives. However, as reviewing to the strengths of single-member districts, it rests in the close ties between representatives and constituents, the accountability of representatives to the voters, and constituency service. Based on the overall comparison, the conclusion is that there is no single ‘best’ system. However, if only to choose the electoral systems that best allot parliamentary seats to reflect the votes cast by the electors will be the Mixed Member Proportional system.

Governments will commonly use two types of electoral methods known as First Past the Post and Proportional Representation. Both electoral methods have numerous benefits and hindrances that make them different from each other. First Past the Post means that the first

FPTP is the second most used electoral system worldwide, and in the UK it is used primarily in general elections to reach a fully representative, democratic electoral system. In assessing whether we should scrap FPTP, we must first establish what an electoral system ought to provide. The purpose of an electoral system in the UK is to fairly elect representatives for the population to make up an effective government, as we operate with a system of representative democracy. For an ideal democracy to function, an electoral system that delivers a strong constituency link, genuine voter choice, an effective government is fundamental. It is also important for a system to operate simply and with transparency for the population. As Tom Stoppard once wrote, “It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.”

The first past the post system also known as the single - member plurality system is a classification in which the country is divided into districts. This system is quite successful as it allows the winner to obtain a majority in parliament. The candidate gains a parliamentary seat by finishing first in a single district. This reform would not achieve the desired effect of reducing the disintegration of the party landscape. This is because, despite its antiquity and simplicity, the first past the post system is becoming less common as it is possible that the party with the most votes may not win the election. Thus, it focuses enormous power in the hands of one party that might only represent 20% of the electorate. It is mainly used in Britain

First Past the Post provides greater choice and better representation than PR systems. Whether or not First Past the Post (FPTP) provides a greater choice and better representation than a PR based system is debatable. Voting systems, also known as electoral systems, are the method by which we elect representatives to Parliament. Voting systems are important is that they determine who is elected, which people are allowed to vote, and ultimately who runs our regional, and national legislatures. Who is elected directly affects what kinds of policies are passed and who benefits or suffers from those policies.

For decades, Canadians have been defending their right to have a fair and open electoral system. Since its creation in 1867, Canada has been proud to call itself a true democratic country, but today there would be many people who disagree with this statement. The Canadian electoral system, which uses First Past The Post (FPTP), has come under scrutiny for not being as fair as it claims to be. Over the past couple of decades, many countries have switched their system to Proportional Representation (PR) or some form of it. Based on successful results in other nations, Canada’s current FPTP system should change to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), which is a form of Proportional Representation, as it will allow for more fair elections. The intent of this paper is to outline how an electoral reform from First Past the Post to Proportional Representation or Mixed-Member Proportional, will lead to more confidence in the government, more accurate seat-vote percentage, and better overall representation of the population.

Party list voting systems are the most common form of proportional representation, with over 80 percent of the PR systems in the world using this voting method (Amy 2006). In Party List voting systems, each party puts up a list of candidates for each multi-member electoral district. Voters vote for a party, and the party receives seats in proportion to their overall share of the vote in the electoral district. Winning candidates are taken from the lists in order of their position on the lists.

Some UK citizens might explain their concerns over First-Past-The-Post because the system is deemed to be outdated and unfair. The royal opposition also explains that the current system excludes smaller political parties by discarding the least popular votes, the current system promotes tactical voting by voters choosing the most popular or common representative, and the UK’s voting participation has fallen 65% since the past few years due to citizens lack of interest in highly controversial politics. Altho they express their concerns, First-Past-The-Post is the best system for the UK government.

Before their electoral reforms, both Japan and Taiwan adopted SNTV (single nontransferable vote) in legislature elections (Lin, 2006). Each electorate casts only one vote, and seats are allocated to the top candidates within each multimember district (Hsieh, 2002). Under the majoritarian electoral system, candidates had to not only compete against counterparts, but within their own parties as well (Lin, 2006). It was therefore more important for candidates to carry out their own campaign, in order to win the office (Holtz-Bacha et al., 2007). On the other hand, for political parties, it was more critical to strategically maximise their total number of seats, rather than winning a higher total vote share (Lin, 2006). A culture of personalised election campaigns therefore developed, and party affiliation lost its importance accordingly (Hsieh, 1996).