Farage’s party could win 42% of Commons seats with only 26% of the vote. That’s not the way civilised countries do democracy, says Guardian columnist Will Hayward
As a non-Brit, I watch what’s happening like it’s a slow motion car wreck.
France has 2 round parliamentary elections.
First round: You vote for someone to represent your constituency. Only 2 candidates remain.
Second round: Two weeks later, it’s the second round. You vote for one of the 2 candidates that won the first round. The winner becomes an MP.
Throughout France, Marine Lepen candidates won 35% to 40% of the votes in the first round. They qualified for the second round. Luckily, in the second round, citizens rallied against Lepen candidates, voting for whoever was their opponent.
What will happen if Nigel Farage gets 35% or 40% 😲? You don’t have a second round…
If France used the FPTP voting system, Marine Lepen would be ruling the country with a huge majority in Parliament.
Slightly tangential, but something that really pisses me off is how we had something like this system for elections for mayors and some other local positions.
The Supplementary Vote was used for all combined authority mayoral elections until the Elections Act 2022 abolished it. It was basically the Alternative Vote (Instant Runoff/Ranked Choice Voting) but limited to two choices: the top two candidates who received the most preferences would advance to a runoff which used the second choices. It’s similar to the French system but it’s all done on the same ballot instead over two separate votes.
The Tories had it in their manifesto to replace it with FPTP, and they did that through the EA2022. I knew they weren’t on board with changing parliamentary elections to a better system, but getting rid of (marginally better) established systems says a lot to me about what they think about democracy.
That’s cool. They tricked a transferable voting system into thinking it was fptp. But we can’t just copy the French, this is England. The racists would never accept it.
As a non-Brit, I watch what’s happening like it’s a slow motion car wreck.
France has 2 round parliamentary elections.
First round: You vote for someone to represent your constituency. Only 2 candidates remain.
Second round: Two weeks later, it’s the second round. You vote for one of the 2 candidates that won the first round. The winner becomes an MP.
Throughout France, Marine Lepen candidates won 35% to 40% of the votes in the first round. They qualified for the second round. Luckily, in the second round, citizens rallied against Lepen candidates, voting for whoever was their opponent.
What will happen if Nigel Farage gets 35% or 40% 😲? You don’t have a second round…
If France used the FPTP voting system, Marine Lepen would be ruling the country with a huge majority in Parliament.
Slightly tangential, but something that really pisses me off is how we had something like this system for elections for mayors and some other local positions.
The Supplementary Vote was used for all combined authority mayoral elections until the Elections Act 2022 abolished it. It was basically the Alternative Vote (Instant Runoff/Ranked Choice Voting) but limited to two choices: the top two candidates who received the most preferences would advance to a runoff which used the second choices. It’s similar to the French system but it’s all done on the same ballot instead over two separate votes.
The Tories had it in their manifesto to replace it with FPTP, and they did that through the EA2022. I knew they weren’t on board with changing parliamentary elections to a better system, but getting rid of (marginally better) established systems says a lot to me about what they think about democracy.
That’s cool. They tricked a transferable voting system into thinking it was fptp. But we can’t just copy the French, this is England. The racists would never accept it.