Talk:Plurality voting/Archive 1

Original contents

can someone change http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Onevoteballotname.gif to have the candidates name look hand written instead of looking typed?

I made some changes that I think improve this article, but there's some major reconstruction that's going to be necessary. Someone should take a swipe at making sense of this. I'm not sure exactly where to start -- RobLa

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First Past the Post is the electoral system used in the United Kingdom and in some other countries. In such a system the country (or political subdivision) is divided into constituencies, most commonly with approximately equal populations. In each such constituency when there is an election, the person with the largest number (plurality) of votes is declared the winner to represent all residents of that constituency.

Its opponents say its principal deficiencies are

• disproportional election results that may mean parties may have a different percentage of seats in parliament to their percentage votes in the general election

• its discouragement of local small parties and independents, most of whom cannot win local electoral battles, with the dominance of major parties

• Its use of Single Member constituencies (ie, only one MP elected)

Its supporters say its principal benefits are:

• stable single party government

• an absence of small parties that can force minority policies on governing parties, as happens in countries with regular coalition governments

• a clear choice between two alternative governments (Labour or the Conservatives) with the electorate knowing exactly what they are voting on, rather than post-general election negotiations that might produce governments the electorate neither expected nor wanted. (eg. In Ireland in 1992, two parties, Fianna Fáil and Labour, having fought the election bitterly opposing each other, then entered into government together to the surprise and bewilderment of voters.)

• maintaining a direct link between the Member of Parliament and his or her constituency. (Most proportional systems do not elect on MP from each constituency and often don't use territorial constituencies at all.)

• a simple voting mechanism, ie indicating a vote by means of an 'X' beside a person's name. (Other alternative systems may require numbers, etc)

Its Opponents say its principal flaws are:

• It produces majority governments even when the people have not voted for them

• It creates 'false' election results, producing landslides (eg, 1987, 1997, 2002) that were the creation of the electoral system, not the choice of the people

• It damages democracy by producing inaccurate national results that so lack proportionality that voters cannot be guaranteed that their will will be reflected; 25% of voters, those who voted for the SDP-Liberal Alliance in 1987 in Britain, for example, had their voices ignored when the electoral system only 'gave' them 4% of the seats.

The Liberal Democrats (UK) has long campaigned for an end to the First Past the Post system. The Conservatives support its retention. Labour, having indicated a willingness to consider change, now seems to be for maintaining the status quo.

While First Past the Post is used universally in Great Britain and Nothern Ireland for parliamentary elections, an alternative system, PR.STV, which offers greater proportionality and also greater complexity, is used in local government elections in Northern Ireland.

This wrong, in the UK, local election do not use a STV system. It is multiple (3) votes for the same number of seats, these are not transferable.

Ultimately, the issue of whether or not to use the First Past the Post system boils down to a simple question: which of the following is the more important?

• stability
• accuracy
• constituency link with an MP
• proportionality

An Example of First Past the Post

Take for example a mythical constituency, called Wikipedia North. One Member of Parliament to be elected.

Results

Candidate	Votes
Nancy Ash, Anti-Radical Party	999
John Maurice, Not So Radical Party	1000
Jean O'Leary, Radical Party	1001
Michael Yates, Independent	1000

Interpreting the Results

Under First Past the Post, Jean O'Leary would win the seat, having won more votes than each of her opponents. Her majority would be described as 1.

Critics of the First Past the Post system would point out that of the 4000 votes cast, O'Leary only got 1001, whereas a total of 2999 were cast against her for other candidates. Supporters of the First Past the Post system would say she was the most popular candidate on offer. Having got more votes, she was entitled to win the seat.

Why does First Past the Post produce Disproportional Results?

The system's disproportionality is caused by the ability of one candidate to win a seat even though the majority of votes were cast against that candidate, with he or she in the above case being the choice of marginally over 25% of the electorate. In 1987 in Britain, for example, the opposition votes were split between two parties, Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance, allowing the Conservatives to win seats even though the majority of voters in a particular constituency were opposed to the conservatives. If the split between Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance allowed the Conservatives to win more seats and so a landslide in 1987, the split between the Conservatives and the Liberal Alliance in 1997 and 2002 allowed Labour to win a landslide majority. In all three cases, 1987, 1997 and 2002, the winning party actually received a percentage of the popular vote that was less than 50%.

A Practical Example

In the mythical election result above for Wikipedia North, if the Anti-Radical Party and the Not So Radical Party had arranged for one of them not to contest the election but have their voters vote for the other party, the remaining candidate would have got 1999 and so easily won the seat. But by splitting the votes of those opposed to the Radical Party, they gave the seat to the Radical Party candidate. In theory, if this exact result was replicated in 100 constituencies, the result would be

• Radical Party 100 seats
  • Total Vote: 100,100
• Anti-Radical Party 0 seats
  • Total Vote: 99,900
• Not So Radical 0 seats
  • Total Vote: 100,000
• Independents 0 seats
  • Total Vote: 100,000

Yet, the Radical Party would only have approximately 25% of the vote, and would only have 100 votes more in total than the Not So Radical Party, yet the latter would have one 0 seats to the Radical Party's 100. This is, of course, an extreme case. No election would produce such a dramatically disproportionate result. That First Past the Post produces disproportionality in some form is not in doubt. Its supporters argue that its benefits in terms of electoral stability and clear-cut results outweighs a degree of disproportionality.

Alternative Electoral Systems

List System
Voters vote for parties whose percentage support is then used to indicate how many of a list of candidates submitted by them are elected.
Strength Absolute Proportionality
Weakness Loss of local link with voters as not based on constituencies or personal votes
Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote (PR.STV)
Voters vote for candidates on ballot papers, marking '1', '2', '3' etc to indicate preferences. Those with lowest votes are eliminated and their votes re-distributed and counted. The process continues until one candidate reaches a 'quota'. This continues until all seats in a constituency are filled.
Strength - relative proportionality
Weakness - complicated. May involve multi-member constituencies.

Electoral systems can also be constructed using parts of other systems. For example, the List System & PR.STV can be combined, with two-thirds of parliamentary seats elected by PR.STV via constituencies, and the remainder filled from a List, to produce absolute or near to absolute proportionality.

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First Past the Post is ALWAYS capitalised, never written in lower case. (It is so basic students lose marks in exams if they put it in the lower case.) JTD 23:21 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)

• There are two grammatical issues regarding this expression: hyphens and capitals.
  • According to The Random House Handbook hyphens are used in compound modifiers when they precede the modified term and the first element of the term is itself a modifier.
  • I can find no grammatical justification for generally capitalizing each element in "first-past-the-post". I have seen it both with and without capital letters, but in this regard I would prefer the authority of the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/vote2001/hi/english/voting_system/newsid_1173000/1173697.stm to that of professorial idiosyncrasy. In the case of article titles Wikipedia policy here would overide standard rules as they relate to titles. Eclecticology 01:48 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

So in other words you want students who use Wiki when learning about FPtP not to understand that it is the formal name of a system but simply to think it is merely a description of a system. If it is used as the name, it is regularly capitalised. Only if it is decribing a system is it in lower case. That's no personal idiosyncrasy, its basic english. In this case, you are not describing a system, you are naming it in the name of an article. As such, it is supposed to be in capitals, a basic grammatical rule. When it is used as the name not the description it is generally capitalised. The context decides the form in which it is used. In this context, capitalisation is a basic elementary grammatical requirement. JTD 02:00 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

It isn't the "formal name" of a system at all. It is a term drawn from horse racing to describe that kind of system by analogy with a horse race. As far as I know no legislature in any country with such a system has ever passed the likes of an act intituled "An Act To Establish a First Past the Post Electoral System". I agree that in a paper based publication these words would be capitalixed, but so would "Electoral" and "System" (which for some unknown reason JTD has chosen not to capitalize). For technical reasons, related to the linking of articles, Wikipedia has consciously chosen to overide that usual English language rule so that all words in a title except the first are begun with lower case letter unless the word would otherwise be written with a capital as with a personal name.

As far as students are concerned Wikipedia is not a term or examination paper. Students adopt the Wikipedia conventions at their own risk. In taking my position I am not necessarily addressing students as that term is usually understood. Nevertheless it strikes me as remarkably petty that your professorial colleagues would reduce marks on this basis, when the issue would really be about understanding such a political system. Eclecticology 06:49 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

We don't "name" articles in all caps unless they're the names of people, places or such. This is not an official name. Let's PLEASE quit changing it back and forth. -- Zoe

Yep - there is no reason to have this article title in caps. It simply ain't a proper noun so it is not capitalized. Please refer to Wikipedia:naming convention (capitalization) for the rationale. --mav

First Past the Post is a proper noun. It is the formal name of a voting system. When used simply as a reference to methodology it is not capitalised. When used as a name of a voting system it is. Hence you get references to FPTP not fptb in academic texts. It is the same as Proportional System using the Single Transferable Vote (PR.STV, never pr.stv) which is capitalised when using the formal name of the system, not capitalised when describing the methodology. Electoral system in this instance is not capitalised because it is simply in this instance a descriptive phrase contextualising the name of the voting system. ÉÍREman

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"In the UK, there were only two majority governments in the 20th century."

This certainly wrong, the last five governments have been majority governments. It should probably state that there have been only two hung governments in the UK in the 20th century.

It could either be a garbled reference to the existence of two occasions when the monarch in special circumstances asked the PM to form a govt with a parliamentary majority rather than the usual request to form a govt capable of surviving in the House of Commons. The former is used when in a time of national emergency a broadbased govt is needed but the PM's own party lacked a parliamentary majority or had a tiny one. When the former is asked, it is usually a cue to form a coalition. David Lloyd George was asked to do so in 1916, hence the formation of a Liberal-Conservative coalition. Winston Churchill received a similar request in 1940, hence the formation of the Conservative-Labour coalition. Except in those war-time cases, a PM is simply asked to form a govt capable of surviving in the HofC, which can mean a minority government. ÉÍREman

I suspect it means that there were only two elections where the resulting government received over 50% of the vote. I don't know if this is correct but this is what I think is meant. (From a glance around the internet 1900 and 1931 saw single parties achieving over 50% while the 1935 coalition together got over 50%, but no individual party did so.) Blorg 21:54, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please stop screwing around with this name and making wikipedia looking like a home for illiterates. First Past the Post is the formal name of a voting system and is treated like a proper name in titles, just like President of the United States, Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote, President of Ireland, etc. It is not treated as such if talking generically, just as single transferable vote if discussing the methodology of electoral systems generically is written in lower case, just as you use Pope and pope, Prime Minister and prime minister, President and president, etc, in different contexts. This is a clear definition of a clear explicit voting method, not a generic talk about voting. Students would be docked marks if they did not know when to capitalise and when to use in lower case, why can't some people on wikipedia understand the difference? ÉÍREman 01:28 May 14, 2003 (UTC)~

FYI, in case it happens again :), these pages redirect to this article: First Past the Post, First-past-the-post electoral system, First-past-the-post election system, First past the post, Relative majority and Plurality voting -- Jimregan

I know, Jim. I'm the one always setting up redirects all over the place (though I forget if I did any here). It would be nice however if students checking the information actually found that the text on the correctly named page, not the wrongly named redirect. It does not do much for the reputation of wiki if, having been told by their lecturers of the importance of capitalising the name when writing about the actual system, a student finds a supposedly credible encyclopædia then puts in the text in a form that the student has been told is wrong, and indeed worse than that, in a form that they were told if they used they would have marked docked over, because of how wrong it is. ÉÍREman 02:03 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, you did a couple. BTW, what electoral system do we have? I didn't find it on Politics of Ireland. Jimregan 02:56 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote (PR.STV). Unfortunately it keeps being moved to the wrong name, using the wrong capitalisation, etc. I don't what it is about wiki and electoral systems but people keep getting the capitalisation wrong, merging electoral systems that are somewhat different, getting details of them wrong. This one is at Single Transferable Vote (via a redirect at 'single transferable vote' (aaagh!)). Everytime anyone fixes it, someone screws it up again. Even getting the correct capitalisation for STV was a struggle. At this stage I have abandoned trying to fix the electoral system texts. Simply getting the titles right is frustration enough. :-) ÉÍREman 04:11 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Aha. My Dad's a great fan of that system, it nearly got him elected to the local council :) (His main deal was litter policy, so he refused to do flyers or posters, and he's always hated canvasers. He got votes mostly by people ticking his name in case it was him :) -- Jimregan 04:28 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

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ÉÍREman says that "First Past the Post is the formal name of a voting system and is treated like a proper name in titles", and is mystified that anybody might think otherwise. Well, I've read a lot of books and spent way too many years in school, and I've never ever heard of a voting system's name being capitalized, formal name or no. I'm in a hotel room right now, so printed MoS is not handy, but instead of saying "every student knows this" over and over, I think we need to see some authoritative citations (never got any for Communist state, sigh, but hope springs eternal). If this naming convention is something important that wikipedians don't know but should, I don't think it's asking too much that it be documented at least as carefully as, say, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships). (It's also more efficient to point to an MoS page than to fill up talk page after talk page with repetitious verbiage. :-) ) Stan 05:26 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

I've taught the flaming thing to third level student for eight years. IF the thing is being named, it is treated as . . . a name. (surprise, surprise). If it is being talked about generically, it isn't. Learn the difference people definition and methodology, or try looking at a grammar book for how you treat formal unique names. If you talk about people generically you don't capitalise. If you talk about Stan or Jim you do because guess what? It is a unique specific reference. A name. First Past the Post is a unique reference to a unique name of a unique clearly defined system. So is Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote (or PR.STV as most people call it). If you are generically talking about using a single transferable vote, it isn't capitalised. If you are talking about the Single Transferable Vote system (a specific system) you capitalise. The inability of some people to understand basic elementary rules of capitalisation is mind blowing. Is the standard of english language teaching so bad that people don't know what a capital letter is and where you use it? From some of the nutty namings on wiki it must be. No wonder Sian left wiki, saying that the standard of english appalled her! ÉÍREman 06:21 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

The capitalization situation in English is just not as simple as you're making out. For instance, there was a recent debate over capitalization of bird species names, and sensitized by that, I've been paying attention to capitalization in the information about types of fish I've been adding. Guess what? The most authoritative sources online, such as fishbase.org, as well as the published papers, don't tend to capitalize, even for the proper name of a single species of fish. So either we have lots of research icthyologists that are not as well-educated as your third level students, which I grant is a possibility :-), or else they - and the editors of their journals - don't agree that every name-like term has to be capitalized. Another hint is that when I saw "First Past the Post", my instantaneous reaction was "title of a book" not "name of an electoral system". Language is what its speakers make of it, not what the pedants say it is, and if you're familiar with the history of English, you know that the rules of capitalization have changed drastically over the years, and are continuing to change. In this case, I suspect that British English is clinging to an old rule that's already been abandoned in the US; here I think the preferred form would be '"first past the post" electoral system'. But now that my curiosity has been piqued, I must wait on tenterhooks until I can get to an MoS. Stan 08:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

It seems to me that the only authority that ÉÍREman has for his position is himself, ad hominem arguments, and analogies. At least I earlier tried reference to the Random House Hanbook and the BBC to established the contrary view. I pity the students that have been misled for the past eight years. Simply "naming" something is not a sufficient criterion for capitalizing what it is called. Lower case is the general rule in all cases unless there is a specific contrary rule. Even as I disagreed with him (and continue to disagree) about capitalizing bird names, I found his argument there stronger than it is here. There are in fact numerous bird books that do capitalize. Using capital letters in referring to a system solely by its initials does justify a back process of applying that rule when the name is given in full. A first past the post system is "de facto" in many countries, but none of them has arrived at that by passing "An Act to Implement a First Past the Post Electoral System". There is no organized First Past the Post Party in any country. Had they done so I would have viewed the matter quite differently. This is not a question of the "basic elementary rules"; elementary rules are the ones that are clear and consistent across style and grammar manuals. When most authorities don't mention the specific issue, it is hardly elementary. If ÉÍREman's students could see their professor's behaviour here on this matter they would do well to appeal the way he has marked their papers. ☮ Eclecticology 09:05 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Mail the students a link to this discussion? Oh that would be cruel... Anyway, I foolishly drank Thai iced tea at dinner, no chance of sleep :-), so I poked around a bit more. The online style guides generally summed up with "Capitalization rules are quirky" without addressing this one directly (closest might be "cold war", which Chicago says to do in lowercase). Empirical usage according to Google is comically random; people will say "first past the post (FPTP)", the urge to capitalize the acronym being strong apparently (but there was one pedant who wrote it "FPtP"). Hyphens are extremely popular too, even the Beeb delivered "first-past-the-post (FPTP)" in http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/208611.stm. Also amusingly, the Google search for "fptp uk bbc" delivered this very talk page in the 10th position from the top, so at least the rest of the net gets to see that we're having an earnest discussion on this important topic. :-) Stan 10:01 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

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With regards to the US, FPtP is common, but not universal. Runoff voting is used in quite a few local elections, and is even used in a few federal elections (I believe Louisiana elects its Senators by runoff voting, and there may be other examples). --Delirium 19:32 8 Jul 2003 (UTC) Never run into it myself. I see in Louisiana it is normal [1]. Rmhermen 19:51 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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I deleted the "What the critics say" stuff, because we basically already had the facts in other places in the article, and we don't need the advocacy here.

Re: Duverger's law: does Duverger's law make a prediction about a particular constituency, or about the whole country? In Canada, how many parties are typically competitive in a given riding? DanKeshet

Duverger's law seems to deal with primarily with particular constituencies. The Riker paper referenced in the Duverger's law article discusses current-day Canada and Civil War Era U.S. politics in some detail, pointing out that these are cases where multiple parties can emerge (I'd say more about this, but I can't track down my copy of the paper) -- RobLa 02:42 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'd feel a lot more comfortable if the bit about multiple-party systems in single-winner districts were first fleshed out on Duverger's Law, with references, then brought back here. In Gary Cox's Making Votes Count, he argues for an extended Duverger's Law, saying that there will be no more than n+1 competitive parties in an n-sized district, unless: it is a highly fractured electorate (say, votes are on a linguistic or tribal basis with no distinguishable second choice), or a few other condiditions I don't remember (and I don't have a copy of it on me either). DanKeshet

Also, am I moving in circles here, or do you think WikiProject Voting Systems is actually improving? DanKeshet

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I removed this nonsense.

One of the disadvantages of FPTP voting is also one of its advantages. Because each electoral district votes for its own representative, the elected candidate is held accountable by the voters. One argument is that such accountability helps to prevent fraudulent or corrupt behaviours by elected candidates. If one is perceived as incompetent, the people in the electoral district can easily replace him. In other words, the voters in each electoral district have full power over who they want to represent them.

This has got nothing whatever to do with first past the post voting: it might be an argument for single-member electorates (which in turn may or may not use FPTP), but in this article it's plain silly.

Tannin 16:37, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Although I agree that it doesn't serve much of a useful purpose, and that it is probably better removed, this argument is regularly used by supporters and beneficiaries of FPTP. The politically naïve tend to believe it. Eclecticology 00:20, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Then perhaps we should mention it in something like the terms you used above. A tricky one to word correctly - do you want to take a stab at it? (I have never heard this one used, but then no-one in this part uses FPTP: it's a non-issue.) Tannin 12:57, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

As suggested I've revised the paragraph. I didn't want to go too far in destroying the argument, because it is, after all, a section on "advantages". We still have the FPTP in Canada, but it has recently received more scrutiny. The established parties have done very well, thank you, with it. They are very fond of majority governments which allow them to put through any policies they wish without effective opposition. Public reaction, especially from young voters, has been to not bother to vote since they feel that their vote does not matter. Eclecticology 04:48, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Reader confused

I'm commenting as a pure reader, as I don't have any experience about this type of electoral system nor I would know how to add to the matter.

Anyways, I think this page is totally incomprehensible. I don't have a clue about how the FPTP system works. Sorry if this sounds trollish but I'm sincere and willing to interact...

I haven't understood anything, and the example (choice of a capital city? WTF?) is very badly laid out. Please, could someone review/rewrite the example of FPTP election?

Aside 11:43, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think the problem is that the example not only illustrates the procedure (which is so simple you may even have missed it); it tries to introduce immediately an illustration of what is wrong with it. There probably needs to be an immediate example. I too found the example confusing at first, and think it could be improved. The fact is that most elections are not to choose a place but a candidate, and I think it would make more immediate sense if the election was for people. Also, the sample election (and any real parliamentary election) has big numbers, which obscure meaning. I have created a much simpler example. Notinasnaid 20:59, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Elections in Ancient Greece

Elections in Ancient Greece resembled First Post The Post elections in that there were only two candidates (Yes and No) and the candidate with the greatest number won.

Syd1435 10:20, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)

But didn't that automatically result in a majority every time? Funnyhat 06:55, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Unbelievable result in Manitoba.

In 1926, in Manitoba, the Conservatives got 42.2% of the vote and won no seats at all.

In 2004, after yet another loss to the Liberals, the Conservative are unconvinced about the need to replace First Past The Post.

The Conservatives should have their heads examined!

Syd1435 12:46, 2004 Oct 5 (UTC)

Strong vs. weak government

A recent edit introduced this sentence:

Because first-past-the-post is held to produce strong government (see below), it follows that those who prefer weak government (government unable to effectively introduce social change or legislative progress) might support first-past-the-post.

This doesn't make sense to me at all, but I don't know enough to correct it. Should it say that those who prefer weak government might not support first-past-the-post? Or that first-past-the-post is not held to produce strong government? Or is the sentence correct for reasons I don't understand—and if so, can someone knowledgeable explain it more clearly for the benefit of readers like me? Thanks—Triskaideka 19:02, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I wrote the sentence, but managed to invert the intended meaning somehow. I have tried to reword it. Notinasnaid 20:35, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Clean sweep in New Brunswick 1987.

The election result in New Brunswick, Canada, for 1987 was 55-0 a Clean sweep.

This is surely not a guarantee of "strong government", but "over-strong" and potentially uncountable goverment.

By all means, have a voting system that rewards the winner with some extra seats, to give them a workable but not a huge lazy majority.

At the same time, ensure that some loyal opposition is represented in parliament too. That is the corollary of the desire for strong government.

The clean sweep 55-0 result in NB, if repeated, is liable to bring the institution of parliament into disrepute.

Some suggestions include:

• introduce IRV (preferential voting) which may change the result in a handful of those 55 goverment seats.

• elect some seats, say 20%( or 11 seats) by some kind of PR.

• adjust the proportion of PR seats in light of experience to get the right balance of strong government and strong opposition.

Syd1435 02:08, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

Better terminology for FPTP

To clarify the distinction between Plurality and Majority, consider the following.

• Majority - more than 50% - First past the (winning) post.
• Plurality - more than any other - Leading at the turn.

Syd1435 10:30, 2004 Nov 24 (UTC)

FPTP may be simplest system

Surely FPTP IS the simplest system.

But that does not mean that it is best.

Model T Fords are simple, but how many are made or seen today?

Simple, which may mean fewer moving parts, is often associated with low performanace. A jet engine in principle requires only one moving part, but a high performance jet engine has thousands of parts.

FPTP fails in a number of ways.

• does not ensure that the winning post is 51%
• fails voters who happen to be spread too thinly amongst districts.
• benefits voters who happen to be nicely concentrated amonst the districts.
• may tend to ensure strong governments, but may fail to ensure the equally important strong oppositions.

As for costs of elections, many costs are fixed costs, and vary according to the voting system chosen, for example the cost voter registration, printing ballot papers or arranging for postal votes.

Syd1435 03:08, 2004 Nov 27 (UTC)

Syd1435 03:08, 2004 Nov 27 (UTC)

I take it this is a response to my addition of "Simplicity" to Advantages. These points don't seem to relate to the content of that section though. However, if there is a view that simplicity is a disadvantage *in itself* (rather than the cause of other, already cited disadvantages), then there should probably be an entry in Disadvantages too. I found the same thing when adding "Strong government": it's an advantage only if you value strong government. If, on the other hand, you are saying that the points I raised are NOT in general stated as advantages by any commentators, my entry should probably be removed. I am not an expert on political theory, just trying to add some missing neutrality to what seems an excessively partisan article. Notinasnaid 16:19, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why do we call it First Past the Post instead of Plurality?

In the U.S., I most commonly hear it referred to as the Plurality voting system. 205.217.105.2 23:14, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In the UK, I've never heard that term, so First Past The Post is probably a better main name for historical and current purposes. It may justify a redirected entry, if there isn't one Notinasnaid 09:46, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In the US, I've never heard FPTP except in online comparisons of voting methods. Besides, Syd1435 pointed out above (tersely) that FPTP doesn't even make sense as a name. It implies that the goal of the system is to get to a certain number of votes (like a majority), at which point the election is decided. But the fact is that candidates can (and often do) win with just a plurality, by getting more votes than any other candidate. It doesn't make sense to be "first" to get a plurality, and the "post" seems to move around!

Also, "plurality" is a more concise term to use when comparing voting systems on Wikipedia. I think the page should be moved to "Plurality voting".

RSpeer 16:48, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

First past the post

I think first past th epost voteing scheme is alot fairer than the single transferable and proportional representation voting schemes.It is alot fairer than the others because it is the same as winning a game or a race for instance, you come first you win, unlike the others this is lot more straight forward and is easier to work out who gets the position.You don't have to split the moddle vote you just have to look at the scores and who ever gets the highest wins.The other voteing schemes share out your votes and then you wouyldn't be putting forward your own vision on who should win, In other words people could be twisting the votes in favour of someone else and to me that is cheating. It could be easily sabataged by someone who would like their choice to win and the person themselves could sabatage it, that's why the people should have that confidence that they are making a difference to the vote instead of not going to someone else. Would you like that to happen. by G Beddis

Do you think the article gives a fair representation of the views for and against this system? Notinasnaid 13:00, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't know enough about the issue to comment, but I just moved the "Advantages" section above the "Disadvantages" one. "Disadvantages" had been listed first, and to me, it seemed a little off-kilter to cite the negatives before the positives. After all, we say pros and cons, not cons and pros. Funnyhat 07:02, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

FPTP not NPOV

"First Past the Post" should not be the title of the article for the good and sufficient reason that it's not NPOV: it's a pejorative term used by those who onsider the method obsolete and think that discussing alternatives is a sensible thing to do. The article needs to be renamed "Plurality voting", with FPTP becoming a redirect. -- Anonymous, 02:00 June 15 (UTC).

From my comments above, you can tell that I agree, though I never thought of it being POV - my complaint so far was only that FPTP makes no sense as a name.

Anyway, are there any objections to moving the page to Plurality voting? RSpeer 05:45, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Object. I think it is far more commonly used outside policical theory. Also, I do not see it being used pejoratively in the UK; it is always discussed publicly, so far as I've seen, by those for and against, using that term (e.g. the British Conservative Party, who are firmly in favour: [2]). Notinasnaid 08:09, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I also object, though I think the misunderstanding may be a British/American one. I've seen a lot of British writing refer to "first past the post" as "first past the post". In the U.S., it seems only academics and reformers use "first past the post". "Winner take all" or "plurality" would be more common. Regardless, it seems fine if the British way of referring to it prevails. If this conversation is to persist, someone will have to explain why FPTP is "pejorative". -- RobLa 22:44, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Move (and redirect) to Single-Member District Plurality, the formal name of the voting system. First-past-the-post, despite being more common outside of poli-sci circles, is a nickname and a description, not the formal name.Bizud 12:58, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• It's the same mathematical system when you're not voting for political candidates in districts. The article doesn't talk about the system much outside of the context of districts, though. Perhaps we need a split, with FPTP or SMDP talking about the large-scale political version, and Plurality talking about the voting theory aspects, independent of its implementation, and with the two articles linking to each other in the introduction. RSpeer 02:44, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

I see the page was moved. Strange sort of consensus, it seems to me. Is that how it goes? A draw, so change the status quo? Notinasnaid 2 July 2005 23:20 (UTC)

Independent candidates

It struck me that, while First Past The Post may tend to foster dominant parties, it may also be the only system where independent candidates can transcend party politics and stand in their own right, being elected only local or moral issues. Accordingly, it may be the only system where party politics are not built in to the electoral system, since all other systems apply balances among a group of candidates or party, implicitly supporting the idea that party politics is desirable. But is this really the case? Do other systems exist where a group of voters can reject party politics and vote for an individual, and that potentially the entire elected body could be independent? Hoping to learn, Notinasnaid 29 June 2005 14:19 (UTC)

Certainly there are. In fact, the only voting system I know of that requires candiates to be in a party is party-list proportional representation (including all its variants). Look at the voting system article if you want to learn what other systems there are.

In practice, single transferable vote is a moderately popular voting system that doesn't give much of a practical advantage to being in a party. Cambridge, Massachusetts elects its city council with STV, and generally, party affiliations are never even mentioned in the candidates' campaigns.

So Plurality isn't unique in this respect, and in fact Plurality does have a strategic advantage to being in a party: you want to hold a party primary to avoid vote-splitting.

RSpeer 01:25, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Opening paragraph

In order to avoid getting into a revert war, I will instead here, object to changes which have been repeatedly applied, which infer a point of view and also destroy the meaning - even the sentence structure.

The change was: When this system is in use at all levels of politics it usually results in a true two-party system, based on single seat district voting systems. However, the system of forming a governing government is also crucial; it is very common in former British colonies and is the single most commonly used system for election of parliaments [[3]] based on FPTP voting districts. A thorough list is given below.

to: When this system is in use at all levels of politics it may result in a two-party system, based on single seat district voting systems. However, the system of forming a government is also crucial. It is used in some former British colonies but is only used in 43 of the 191 countries in the United Nations. The system can elect a candidate who is opposed by a majority of voters. [4] based on FPTP voting districts. A thorough list is given below.

Overall, the author seems to have a very strong negative view of FPTP, and this reflects the choice of presentation of facts. The reason I watch this article in the first place is that it seemed to have been written by people who thought it was a lousy system, so I am alert to signs of this bias coming back.

Comment: Sentence 1 ("When this..."): probably improved. Sentence 2 ("However..."): (a) changed "very common" to "it is used". Both points may be true, but it is much softened. Is it "very common"? If so, it should probably say so, or better still say "used in XXX% of...". (b) changed "single most commonly used system for election of parliaments" to "only used in 43 of the 191 countries in the United Nations". How about combining these: "the single most commonly used system for election of parliaments, used by 43 of the 191 countries in the United Nations". This allows the reader to form their own view. (c) added a completely new sentence "The system can elect a candidate who is opposed by a majority of voters." bang in the middle of this sentence, so it is no longer correct English. This at least should be fixed. In addition, why add this particular point? It is covered by "disadvantages". The selective presentation of facts is Point of View too: why not bring in advantages too if we're at it? "The system tends to produce stable and strong government but can elect a candidate who is opposed by a majority of voters." I don't see any need for this, as it is covered later. Sentence 3 ("A thorough"): was isolated from the previous sentence, on which it depends for context.

Agree on the whole and will make appropriate changes, execpt how can it be the most common if it is only used by 43 nations? Mccready 06:54, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

"Most common" doesn't imply a majority (e.g. the most common [Blood_type#Frequency] is O+, which 38% of people have). But the trouble with summarising statistics is that it provides an opportunity to present selective facts. The table linked to in the article [5] shows that this method is used by

(a) In the group "independent states and semi-autonomous territories of the world which have direct parliamentary elections"

• 33% of countries (highest; list PR 32%)
• 45% by population (highest; list PR 23%)

(b) in the group "established democracies"

• 30% of countries (not highest; list PR 42%)
• 71% by population (list PR 9%)

This doesn't present the United Nations data, so I don't know whether, among the United Nations data set, it is highest by country or not.

This data could be used to write

• List PR is used by 42% of established democracies, with this method used by only 30%
• Almost three quarters (71%) of the world's population living in established democracies use this method, with a mere 9% using list PR

I wouldn't write either of these, but you get the gist. For now, I think the article has returned close to balance, though is it in danger of breaching Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms? Not sure. I do think the "only" in "is only used in 43 of the 191 countries in the United Nations" is unnecessary and implies bias in the presentation. We have the numbers, let people decide what they will. I will remove the "only" at this point.

But there remains another serious problem. Originally the text went "single most commonly used system for election of parliaments [1] based on FPTP voting districts." where [1] was the URL above. Unfortunately it now reads "It is used in some former British colonies [1] but is". However the URL, which is a valuable source, does not relate to the sentence in which it is used. I will leave this for now, and hope someone else can find a way to resolve this; I don't think removing the source reference is a good plan, however. I'll return to this if it doesn't get resolved somehow. Maybe picking data from the source would be better, rather than the unattributed UN data. Notinasnaid 09:04, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Good result. Only should go. FPTP doesn't fit the definition of democracy (candidates who the absolute majority don't want can be elected), so agree with you that the formulations above you've rejected are rightly rejected. Mccready 09:43, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I think your reply suggests that you do indeed think FPTP is a very bad idea. If you have very strong opinions on a subject, especially controversial ones (I think it's fair to say that anything that excludes countries that use FPTP from the list of democratic nations is at least slightly controversial) you should take very great care in writing about it, as your opinions may make it hard to maintain neutral presentation. Though you may well have good things to add to "disadvantages". Anyway, I think it's time for someone else to pick this up, though in my view it was a better article before this started.. Notinasnaid 10:00, 28 July 2005 (UTC)