I’m hearing alot about the structural flaws of First past the post voting these days. Glad to see more people talking about the topic. Let’s start making plans to fix this once and for all so people are free to vote how they want.

  • AndrewZabar@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    I’m having a hard time understanding the distinction of the voting method how its outcome differs from popular. I kinda feel like I get that there is a difference, but it’s not clicking. I’m probably just too tired.

    • BougieBirdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 hour ago

      So imagine there’s three parties up for election. Party A gets 40% of the vote, Party B gets 30%, and Party C gets 30%.

      In this scenario with first-past-the-post, Party A wins because they get the majority. This means 60% of voters (also known as the majority) had no impact on the election because their candidates are thrown away.

      On the surface, proportional voting might look similar. But when you consider the highly gerrymandered state of voting districts, you start to realize that the deck is stacked in a very unfair way.

      This is sort of how you wind up in a situation where a candidate wins the election despite not attaining the popular vote - although as I understand it that has more to do with the electoral college (which frankly, also seems undemocratic)