Ranked Choice ftw.
YSK that the First-Past-The-Post voting system allows a political party to gain an absolute majority with a minority of the votes
Submitted 13 hours ago by vanidian1@lemmy.world to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fedcbf31-7c5d-4dd7-9371-ae934e0b0a95.png
Comments
Cooper8@feddit.online 11 hours ago
Magister@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
CatpainTypo@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It would be possible to get a majority and take all with only 23% of the votes. The David Cameron Tories won with 27%. We need a PR system.
palordrolap@fedia.io 12 hours ago
PR will only work if safeguards can be put in place beforehand to prevent one or more parties (political or individual) in an alliance causing a complete government shutdown every time they don't get their way.
What are the odds, do you think, that such safeguards would be put in place when the larger political parties prefer FPTP?
CatpainTypo@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
It’s good enough for all the parties internally.
kbal@fedia.io 10 hours ago
That a minority of votes leads to a majority in parliament doesn't seem like a problem to me. That's just how it works, nothing wrong with that in itself. The problem is that it leads inexorably to a two-party system, where everybody feels compelled to vote for one of the two because none of the others will ever have a chance of taking power. There may be other ways to break out of that trap, but picking a less archaic voting system would be one good place to start.
sanguinepar@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I agree with this, and yet British politics feels a lot more fragmented now than it used to. The Tories are likely looking at being reduced to a rump at the next GE, and Labour will probably get a kicking too, unless they smarten up their act toot sweet. Meanwhile Reform will likely gain a lot of seats (vomit) and the Greens may start to get towards double digits. And the Lib Dems will likely just keep on Lib Demming along.
I think there’s a very real chance of a proper hung parliament next time with no obvious stqble majority coalition possible:
- Reform perhaps to win the most seats (although I am desperately hoping that their claimed support will not translate into as many seats as they think) and try to partner up with the Tories and maybe some of the Ulster Unionists
- Labour to probably lose half their seats, and be forced to look at possible LD, Green, maybe even SNP partnerships.
And possibly neither side able to put together a working coalition that would last for very long.
In which case, FPTP would have done the opposite of the two party system and led to even more divisions! Fun! 🤪
boatswain@infosec.pub 12 hours ago
It would be helpful if this included an explanation, rather than just an assertion. Can you explain how FPTP allows this, and how proportional representation fixes it?
vanidian1@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
You decide to create your own party. The Chocolate Party.
Under FPTP, after intense campaigning, you get 15% of the votes nationally. Millions of people voted for the Chocolate Partly. Sadly, you were crushed in every race. So you don’t get any representative in parliament. You are powerless. The millions of people who vote for you ? They don’t matter.
Under proportional representation, 15 % of the votes means you get 15% of the seats in Parliament.
blackbelt352@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
CGP Gray has a good explanation how FPTP works and how it breaks down and ends up typically collapsing down into a 2 party system or is wildly unrepresentative in multi party systems.
Basically fptp is a winner take all system, whoever gets the most votes wins and beats everyone else in the race. It doesn’t matter if you won by 1 vote or by 1 million votes the result is the same, you won. So if one party can maintain just a slim plurality across numerous districts, they win those districts despite not getting the majority of votes and everyone else’s votes essentially do not count in the greater whole.
aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com 12 hours ago
There is no voting system that fulfills all the Condercet criteria; they all have some corner case
locuester@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Correct!!
Everyone loves to whine about the system when a corner case hits, but they all have corner cases. You have to pick your poison.
otp@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
chunes@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Yes, it’s very interesting.
Ranked choice’s corner case is non-monotonicity, meaning you can harm your chosen candidate by ranking him higher. That’s why I prefer something like range voting.
aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com 2 hours ago
I also prefer range or approval voting
logicbomb@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
What is your reason for saying that?
Just saying something negative makes it seem like it’s a bad idea, but that just encourages people not to change at all. A voting system that tries to satisfy the Condorcet criteria will be far better than any FPTP system.
It’s easier to tear down than it is to build up. What’s your proposed alternative?
aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com 10 hours ago
Did you make a similar comment to OP, who only spoke negatively of a well-used and well-understood system?
What is OP’s proposed alternative? What’s a realistic plan to get there?
SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Sounds like a shitty system!
starlinguk@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
What other European country uses two round elections apart from France?
Buffalox@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
The most idiotic part is that UK actually had a vote to end this shitshow, and they chose not to!!!
How moronic can a population get?
elgordino@fedia.io 12 hours ago
I remember David Cameron being interviewed by John Humphries on Today (the Radio 4 morning news show). Cameron basically lied about what was in the proposal to make it sound like it was some crackpot idea, Humphries did nothing to call him out on it.
Same went for most media coverage really.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It’s almost like it’s a hobby for Conservatives to lie.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 11 hours ago
TBF the people that wanted reform had been pushing for PR. AV was a compromise nobody really liked.
TriangleSpecialist@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I currently live in the UK (moved a few years ago), and one of the single most infuriating thing in the culture here is how “we’ve always done it this way” is THE answer when it comes to justifying anything moronic or broken.
I know that resistance to change and attachment to traditions is not a uniquely British thing but it’s markedly worse here than anywhere else I’ve lived.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I was told in history lessons, that it was also why UK didn’t modernize after WW2.
While the rest of Europe modernized, especially Germany that had to rebuild a lot.
But when UK rebuild, they made the same mistakes as the first time all over again, because of tradition as you say.
realitista@lemmus.org 12 hours ago
The UK voter seems to be roughly as well informed as the US voter.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
There are striking similarities.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
The press widely covered AV as if it was incredibly expensive and didn’t solve any problems, so presented it as if we’d be throwing away beds at children’s hospitals, support for pensioners and equipment for soldiers just to introduce pointless bureaucracy. If the choice was the one most voters thought they were making, then voting against it would have been the sensible option.
Aatube@lemmy.world 10 hours ago