**This was touched on in Morus's diary about the general election, but I wanted to expand on this.
Ah, the time-honoured "first-past-the-post" system. It's how Britain has elected its MPs for centuries. Most current democracies that were ever a part of the British Empire conduct, or have at some time conducted, their elections in that way. Virtually every single election at any level in the US is run in the same manner.
Here in America, where there are two, and only two, major political parties, FPTP doesn't fail us very much at all. The proportion of seats a party wins is usually fairly analogous to the number of votes for that party in the election. I know some may ask if Florida 2000 was a FPTP failure. No, that was an Electoral College failure.
So, in America, because of the rigid two-party system, FPTP works out. But what if we had a multi-party system? Better yet, what if the three or more parties were fairly even?
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