User:MartinHarper/ToDo

I'm going to try for a fancy "to do" list. Stuff that links here is stuff I said I'd do. Don't know how well this will work!

romantic links

scratch

from First Past the Post electoral system

To counteract tactical voting, sometimes groups of like-minded voters will hold preliminary, or primary, elections amongst themselves to choose a candidate for the true election. This ensures that their vote will not be split amongst similar candidates. Sometimes this is institutionalized in the form of a political party.

Critics of the system argue that it can lead to under-representation, and government by minority. If there are three candidates in an election, it is possible for the winner to have received only one more vote than his or her competitors, and thus two thirds of the electorate have voted against the winner. This system also discourages individuals from voting for smaller political parties who they might otherwise support, because their votes will effectively not count in the final tally. This aspect of the system has been cited as both an advantage and a disadvantage.

If the system has multiple areas, such as the states in the electoral college system for the US presidential elections, or the constituencies for the UK parliamentary elections, the system favors political parties with concentrated geographical support, as they can command the majority in that area. This facet of the system leads to the practice of gerrymandering, which is the drawing of electoral district boundaries for the purpose of influencing an election.

Another criticism of this system is that in some situations, the winner may not have a majority, and in fact often does not. Critics point to the existence of other voting systems which are not vulnerable to this, such as runoff voting, instant-runoff voting, approval voting, or Condorcet's method. When multiple seats are involved, proportional representation is also often suggested.