First Past The Post Voting In The UK

 I think it is important to talk about the way in which voting works in the UK. For many of you out there, the system will probably make sense as it is not a unique system here compared to many places in the world. 

In elections held under FPTP, each voter makes a mark next to one candidate on the ballot paper. First Past The Post is a “plurality” voting system: the candidate who wins the most votes in each constituency is elected. 

In the UK we vote for our local representative based on which one of the 650 constituencies we are in, these are geographical areas that are determined based on population. Each person has one vote towards their representative who in turn is generally a member of a political party. And then the party that has the most number of representatives are the ones who are invited to form a government by the king. 

First-past-the-post voting is a common technique for schools because students just need to select their top choice. It is by design a very simple system and works well for simple choices, such as electing a school council or head students. 

Former British colonies frequently use the Westminster electoral system. Despite this common use throughout the former British empire, many have since stopped, including Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, and South Africa. However, several Caribbean and African nations, the US, Canada, and India continue to do so.

On the day of the election, voters get a ballot paper with the list of agreed candidates. Now, as only one MP will be representing a region, every party is represented by one candidate only. It is also common to have a number of people standing as independents, but it is uncommon to see more than one or two elected per election.

The voters get to make a choice and unlike other voting methods of marking candidates with a number based on their preferences, voters have to put a cross on only one candidate of their choice. Now this candidate can either be their favourite one, or it can be someone who has increased chances of winning. However, no matter the exact process that the voter uses, they can only cast a single vote. 

In this system, there is only one candidate from each party, the voter may have to compromise on their choice because there are situations when the voter supports a party but dislikes that particular candidate. Therefore, in such circumstances, he either has to be loyal to his party and vote for that disliked candidate or make a choice of his own and choose the deserving person despite his alliance with any party.

There are however some issues with this style of voting. Much like the American system, which is based on an electoral college, it is possible for a party to win the majority of seats while simultaneously losing the vote overall. This means that one party can command a sizable majority in the house of commons despite darling to secure a majority of the vote. In turn this leads to people feeling disconnected from the government or it can even go so far as to have people believing their vote doesn't count and reducing voter turnout.

It ends up generating two or three huge parties because smaller parties find it hard to win seats. Until recently the UK political scene had been mostly dominated by labour and the conservatives. But more recently we have seen other parties based around national identities grow in support. We see parties like the SNP come about and command majorities despite the votes not reflecting the amount of support seen when looking simply at the seat counts.

For instance, in 2015, the SNP received 50% of the vote in Scotland, yet it won 95% of the seats in Scotland.

Most of the time, parties can form governments on their own thanks to Westminster's FPTP election system. However, these governments may only enjoy the backing of 37% (Conservative 2015) or 35% (Labour 2005), respectively, of the nation.

Parties focus the majority of their resources on campaigning in Constituency that are likely to swing. That are seats that without campaigning would be very a very close win/loss. They craft their platforms to appeal to voters in these areas.

However, measures created to win over voters in these places may not benefit voters in the rest of the nation. Even more so they could actively harm the people in other places or even the nation as a whole. Residents of safe electoral constituencies may feel overlooked by politicians.

The public may find it a little difficult to hold the government to account if the number of MPs received by the party doesn't reach the public's level of support.

In the general election of 2010, more than 900,000 people supported the populist UK Independence Party. Despite this support, UKIP failed to secure even one seat in the House of Commons. 

The Scottish National Party made history by becoming the first minor party to gain more Westminster seats than its proportion of the public vote in the 2015 election.

So the question is, if we are all aware of how flawed the system is, it is widely understood and is a talking point of every election in the UK, why haven't we changed the system of government? Well, it's pretty hard for us Brits to admit that we got things wrong. The system is very old and has been used as the template across much of the world when it comes to governance. 

My opinion is simple, as someone who votes for a minor party, it is time we reevaluate the system we use to elect people and parties to make it fairer for those of us who support smaller parties. With that said I am concerned that people may use this as an opportunity to remove the monarch and royal family from British culture and I feel that would be a shame. 

Thanks for reading, 

Spec