Either/Or: First Past the Post v Proportional Representation
A friend asked me to compose a short piece highlighting the merits and detriments of these two, opposing electoral systems.
FPP
First past the post is the oldest and most common electoral system. It is what we have always used since the birth of constituency elections. The in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, balloting was done publicly and prone to being corrupted by bribery and threats.
It works as follows: the nation is divided up into constituencies in which a candidate from each competing party (or independent) set out their stalls and campaign over a period leading up to the election, at which point the registered voters give their support to one and only one of the candidates on offer. Once all the votes are counted the candidate with the most votes is first past the post and therefore winner and elected member of parliament for that constituency.
PR
Proportional representation aims to make the House of Commons, or any respective parliament building, literally and accurately reflective of the sum total of the nations' voting intentions. If 15% of the vote nationally was cast for, say, the Green Party, then 15% of the seats in parliament should be held by Green Party MP's. To make it easy, that would equate to 90 seats in a 600 strong parliament.
Each party is proportionally represented by the in terms of their share in the vote.
Analysis
In the 2015 election, UKIP tallied nearly 4 million votes, although they didn't manage to get a single seat in parliament. The SNP, on the other hand, got just over a third of the votes UKIP received but managed to get 50 seats in the Commons.
This is because the SNP only fielded candidates in the Scottish constituencies, whereas UKIP entered candidates all over Britain (with very limited representation in Scotland) - UKIP's 4 million votes was spread across a far higher number constituencies than the SNP's total, meaning that although UKIP's vote was considerable in many regions of Britain, their percentage in these regions was never enough to secure an MP by being first past the post. The SNP, with quite the reverse of fortunes, got their candidates elected in nearly every region that they contested.
This is characteristic of a FPP electoral system. So why not automatically and without hesitation revert to a PR system?
In Germany, prior to Adolf Hitler's ascension to power in 1933, the Liberal Weimar Republic adopted a PR electoral system. It's greatest blessing, representation, became it's greatest curse. It encouraged splinter parties and weak-coalitions. This manifested as a fractured and inefficient parliament with all voices and every voice given a proportional amount of time to vent their specific desires and concerns. The populace grew tired with this inefficiency and an appetite grew for a strong leader - we all know how that turned out?
Why did PR encourage splinter parties and weak-coalitions? Under a FPP system, a large, united party struggles to stay united by compromise and tactical agreements - splitting into two or more smaller parties greatly injures their chances of being FPP. They effectively hand power over to the main rival party that does stay united. In PR, a party that gets 30% of the vote could split into two separate parties and with all likely hold still garner 30% of the vote when you add their respective percentages together.
PR ultimately seeks to focus on what divides a party. Take the Tories: they could split into Eurosceptic and a Europhillic wings - but they don't because it would hand many seats to Labour or even UKIP and the Lib Dems (ok maybe not the Lib Dems). In a PR system, they'd be more inclined to. Every party's voice is heard - every party is proportionally represented. Some could argue that this is good - but it does increases the chances of parliament descending into a thousand voices, all arguing for something only slightly different, blocking each other and creating an ineffective and ponderously slow system of government.
FPP prevents this because MP's realise that their greatest chance of election - more specifically of power - is when their party shows a united front. If a Tory would win a specific constituency, but fielding two Tories, a pro-EU or anti-EU would only achieve 3rd and 4th behind Labour and UKIP, for example, then they'd better stay together and work things through (splitting divides their vote share). Parliament, therefore, is occupied by a few parties with a few different voices (normally with a main two). It is less fractured.
But this does not remove the fact that under FPP, a party can receive 12% of the national vote and not get one MP! This is arguably ludicrous, unfair and certainly unreflective. It means, also, that if you support a party that, because of geographical variation, has not chance of being elected in your constituency, then your vote is effectively wasted, impotent - of no effect whatsoever. In fact, it is normally the case that the only really important votes are by those voters who are undecided and live in a marginal seat. Many, if not most of us, have little say, whereas certain voters can decided the nation's outcome.
In PR, every vote has an exact and equally value and all counts towards the total. Once again - it is reflective. But with PR - we lose the vote for a local MP. Instead of voting for your local MP, who you may know by name and nature - you instead vote for a national party whose party vote percentage well be reflected in parliament. There are advantages to both - what you gain with one, you lose with the other and vice versa.
It's Purism V Pragmatism once again. PR is pure but less practical - FPP is applicable and pragmatic, but not as reflective and therefore not as pure. Like in physics, the greater accuracy an experimenter can know about a particle's velocity, the less it can know about it's position and vice versa. It's inherent - built in to the very nature of the differences between the two systems. We cannot have the merits of both and the detriments of neither. It's the nature of the beast.
Which is better? I dunno?
It's A Roffey
