Plurality voting

Plurality voting is widely used throughout the English-speaking world as a result of its spread by the British Empire, including in most of the United States.

Outside of the English-speaking world, it is less popular[citation needed] than its close relatives in the runoff family of methods.

This is a general example for single-winner plurality voting ("first-past-the-post"), using population percentages taken from one state for illustrative purposes.

Under all three versions of multi-winner plurality voting, the three most popular candidates according to voters' first preferences are elected, regardless of party affiliation, but with three different results.

That is perhaps the most fundamental criticism of FPTP, the single-member plurality system, since at least half the votes are always wasted in a district, either as being placed on un-elected candidates or being surplus to what could be needed to win.

It is often claimed by United States Democrats that Democrat Al Gore lost the 2000 Presidential Election to Republican George W. Bush because some voters on the left voted for Ralph Nader of the Green Party, who, exit polls indicated, would have preferred Gore at 45% to Bush at 27%, with the rest not voting in Nader's absence.

[14] That thinking is illustrated by elections in Puerto Rico and its three principal voter groups: the Independentistas (pro-independence), the Populares (pro-commonwealth), and the Estadistas (pro-statehood).

It is so widely recognised that the Puerto Ricans sometimes call the Independentistas who vote for the Populares "melons" in reference to the party colours, because the fruit is green on the outside but red on the inside.

Strategic behaviour is when a voter casts their vote for a different party or alternative district/constituency/riding[clarification needed] in order to induce, in their opinion, a better outcome.

This might have had an impact on the 2000 United States election that was essentially decided by fewer than 600 votes, with the winner being President Bush.

When voters behave in a strategic way and expect others to do the same, they end up voting for one of the two leading candidates, making the Condorcet alternative more likely to be elected.

[17] In gerrymandering, a party in power deliberately manipulates constituency boundaries to increase the number of seats that it wins unfairly.

[22] The two dominating parties regularly alternate in power and easily win constituencies due to the structure of plurality voting systems.

[23] This puts smaller parties who struggle to meet the threshold of votes at a disadvantage, and inhibits growth.

[24] Under this system, many people feel that voting is an empty ritual that has no influence on the composition of legislature.

[24] In August 2008, Sir Peter Kenilorea commented on what he perceived as the flaws of a first-past-the-post electoral system in the Solomon Islands: An... underlying cause of political instability and poor governance, in my opinion, is our electoral system and its related problems.

Moreover, this system creates a political environment where a Member is elected by a relatively small number of voters with the effect that this Member is then expected to ignore his party's philosophy and instead look after that core base of voters in terms of their material needs.

Another relevant factor that I see in relation to the electoral system is the proven fact that it is rather conducive, and thus has not prevented, corrupt elections practices such as ballot buying.Plurality voting is generally considered one of the simplest methods and of the most widely known.

[citation needed] Another counter-argument is that plurality voting is partially considered simple because of its familiarity, which in turn results from its prevalence.

In 1992, for example, a Liberal Democrat in Scotland won a seat (Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber) with just 26% of the votes.

The system of single-member districts with plurality winners tends to produce two large political parties.

In countries with proportional representation there is not such a great incentive to vote for a large party, which contributes to multi-party systems.

The countries that inherited the British majoritarian system tend toward two large parties: one left and the other right, such as the U.S. Democrats and Republicans.

[29] After the 2015 UK general election, there were calls from UKIP for a switch to the use of proportional representation after it received 3,881,129 votes that produced only one MP.

In May 2005 the Canadian province of British Columbia had a referendum on abolishing single-member district plurality in favour of multi-member districts with the Single Transferable Vote system after the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform made a recommendation for the reform.

A second referendum was held in May 2009, this time the province's voters defeated the change with 39% voting in favour.

An October 2007 referendum in the Canadian province of Ontario on adopting a Mixed Member Proportional system, also requiring 60% approval, failed with only 36.9% voting in favour.

British Columbia again called a referendum on the issue in 2018 which was defeated by 62% voting to keep current system.

Countries that use plurality voting to elect the lower or only house of their legislature include:[31] (Some of these may be undemocratic systems where there is effectively only one candidate allowed anyway.)

The fatal flaws of Plurality (first-past-the-post) electoral systems – Proportional Representation Society of Australia