Michael Tae Sweeney: lmao first past the post is so stupid. What a country

lmao first past the post is so stupid. What a country

Yes and it results in our two party system gridlock (occasionally interrupted by a third party candidate spoiling close elections for one side or the other). And that's the *least* stupid outcome! bsky.app/profile/prin...

Doesn't the USA also use FPTP?

waves from Canada 👋

FPTP also results in gerrymandering and thus malappottionmemt.

My take, and this may be a contrary one, is that the British FPTP system has been quite good at delivering governments that are in tune with what people want. Alternative voting systems may be notionally more 'democratic' but give weird outcomes.

how do you know what the British people want?

This is a serious question, what you get is either polling, or the mood of the press. But the latter is strongly influenced by the parliamentary results, so you get reporting of the national mood that fits the those, not vice versa

I grew up there and lived there for 26 years, my entire family and loads of my friends live there, I follow the British media closely, and until 2 years ago I was a an overseas voter myself.

Yes, but, again, how does the media know what the public wants outside of running with the election results.

Well, first, I didn't say it was just the media, but, for what it's worth, one of the jobs of the media during an election campaign is to go out and talk to people and report back on what they hear. I have heard lots of such reports about this election via podcasts and written articles.

What's incredibly bizarre is that the USA uses FPTP for *presidential* elections, where literally its sole result and apparent goal is to make outcomes less democratic. In the UK system, it's usually justified by pointing to the local link between MPs and their constituencies (Still a bad reason)

Except for the few states that do runoffs, in which case we get, e.g., $829 million pouring in two Georgia races to decide control of the US senate (that's the actual number) www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/01...

Georgia Senate races shatter spending recordswww.opensecrets.org The Georgia Senate contests are the top two most expensive congressional elections ever — by a large margin.

And Corbyn’s labour party got 40% of the vote in 2017. So, one amazing result and one average one and he’s a pariah.

I feel like I'm hallucinating this, but there was a choose-your-own-adventure Flash game a decade ago where you played as Corbyn and no matter what you did, the end would be the newspapers calling you a shit uncle.

What a concept bsky.app/profile/saba...

Labour just gained 6 seats in Wales even though their % vote share was *down* 3.9% from the previous election en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Un...

2024 United Kingdom general election in Wales - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

And this is why FPTP usually gives rise to a two party system! 😩

Given enough time, and so long as people mostly vote strategically. The UK electorate is built different though. Proud of them for that, despite their voting system being shit.

As a long-suffering victim of Canadian Westminsterism, I gotta say one of the funniest/worst subplots is opposition parties routinely campaigning on rep-by-pop, then sabotaging their own plans literally as soon as they win 👍

lol it's even funnier when you realise he got *fewer* votes than Corbyn last time round. and it's 33.5%. He only gets 34% if you round up. LOL

Doesn't the USA also use FPTP?

Farage and the Brexit party stood down in many Conservative ridings in ‘19. Tories got destroyed because they didn’t this time.

If you sum up the left parties (Labour + LD + SNP + G + PC + SLDP + Alliance + L independents) there was a +8%p margin change for them. I think there was a lot of tactical voting at the local level in safe Left seats, will be trying to get some graphs up about this

ISTM there is an abundance of both logical arguments and empirical evidence that First Past the Post is the worst voting system imaginable. Unfortunately, it also seems to be the easiest for most people to understand despite its manifest flaws, so we're stuck with it.

Talk to your kids about approval voting and proportional representation today.

Arranging representation strictly by geography in the age of telecommunication is also stupid. What if the person best able to advocate for my views in the legislature lives across the country? Why should anyone be "represented" by someone they voted against?

Very funny that they kicked him out and he won his seat back as an independent.

I do think this is a legitimately better system than the states in almost every way. Both the electoral college and Senate are about as anti democratic.

Better than the US system is an extremely low bar, though

Their primary system, such as it is, is much less democratic.

Sorry US or UK? UK just has party leader votes no?

UK. The party can put up whoever they want for a district, and they can also unilaterally decide to stop an MP from standing for an election for the party. Labour airdropped a bunch of their own executive committee into safe seats this election.

fptp is a great system that has repeatedly made farage parties electorally irrelevant; and prevented smaller parties from having outsized influence during coalition formation

idk i think we do in fact have to hand it to a system that gives the right 20% of the seats despite them having nearly twice that share of voters at least this one time lol