What are the Types of Voting Systems?

Question

What are the different types of voting systems?

Answer

First past the post is where you vote for one candidate that standing for election. The candidate with the majority votes in each constituency wins and will become the MP, It doesn’t matter if they got more than 50% overall, if they got the most votes, they have won anyway.

First past the post is used in the UK because it is the easiest way to understand and the quickest way to count the ballot papers which allows there to be an apparent winner. This system is quite simple to understand because you can only vote for one candidate by just putting an (x) next to the candidate you want to vote for.

Single Transferable vote is where you can vote in the order of preference of all the candidates. For example, if there 5 candidates standing up for election, when you’re voting, you can order them the way you want. This voting system is a good way because if you don’t get you don’t your first choice, you’re more than likely to get your second or third. Nevertheless, this way takes a long a long time.

Alternative vote is similar to the single-transferable vote as they both order candidates the way they want, but with this voting system, if a candidate wins over 50% of the vote on the voter’s first preference, they are elected and win the vote. However, if the candidate does not get 50% on the first referral, the candidate with the smallest amount of votes is removed and their votes second referral, are added to the votes. This will continues until a candidate has more than 50% of the overall vote.

Proportional Representation is where a party will get seats based on the percentage of votes they got. For instance, if a party gained 45% of the votes, they would get 45% of the seats in the House of Commons. There are advantages and disadvantages for this voting system, the advantages are that you get the percentage of seats for the percentage of votes you get, however, this can be bad for the government because it will be weak as there will too many parties with seats.