First Past The Post Essay

There are lots of advantages as well as disadvantages entailed with how the first past the post works. A major advantage of the first past the post system is how simple and straightforward it is for the constituents, as well as people around the world to understand it. For example, in the general election in the UK, Natalie McGarry was elected the MP for the Glasgow East constituency because she gained more votes than the other candidate did, by 56.9% of the votes, which is very simple to understand. However, although the first past the post is one of the few system that are easy to understand, it can in fact lead to distorted results that can make people confused. For instance, at the end of world word 2, the winning party who won the election actually received fewer voter than the party coming in second place. This does not seem fair or matter of fact democratic, because the

This can arguably be more democratic that the Proportional representation system where the political parties picks the candidates, instead of the voters. In addition, the voting system make it easier to count the votes so the turnaround on the results is in hours rather than days. As matter of fact, the fastest count time was in Sunderland where it took those only 42min to address who won the election. Furthermore, in the election 2010, only 0.28% of the votes were spoilt which again shows the advantages of this system.

Despite all of the advantages of the first past the post system, there are numerous of disadvantages with this election system. Firstly, the election system has been criticized for not being proportional. Which, means that political parties number of seats in the legislature do not accurately reflect the share of the popular vote in the