Voters choose one preferred candidate, and they mark an X next to the person on a ballot paper. The one who gets the most number of votes wins representation of the constituency. So, it is easy to count the votes and clear to see who wins. However, the results tend to favor the major parties, i.e. the Labor Party and the Conservatives, and disadvantage minority ones. To illustrate, the Liberal Democrats Party had never won more than 62 votes before 2005. Other small parties such as UKIP, BNP, etc have never won more than 10% of the total vote. In addition, over the past 50 years of British elections, the power shifts between the Conservatives and the Labor Party, and is never in the hands of the Lib Dams or other small parties. Thus, using FPTP method in UK elections is a clear discrimination against minority parties. FPTP also leads to dubious, or at least not optimal, election results. Since it does not require a majority to elect a candidate, it allows representatives to win by relatively low amount of public support. Thus, the outcome does not accurately represent the chosen candidate’s popularity and capability. For example, the results of the UK General Election 2005 showed that the Conservatives got 32.3% of the votes, Labor 35.3%, and Lib Dams 22.1%. As a result, Labor won by having only 2% more seats than the Conservatives. This outcome was vague, since gaining 2% more votes did not prove that the Labor Party had a clear advantage over the Conservatives. Therefore, FPTP fails to select the optimal or the right candidate. Another problem associated with the FPTP method is that it causes a large amount of votes to be wasted. Wasted votes are those that have no effect on determining the election outcome. Often times, the winner needs less than the votes it receives to win the election. So those votes above the number needed for a candidate to win are wasted. Votes that are casted for a losing candidate will be wasted as well. For instance, during the UK General Election of 2005, roughly 18% of votes were excess for the winning candidate. And 52% of the votes went to the losing candidates. These add up to a total of 70% of votes being wasted. In other words, only 30% of the total vote played role in selecting the winner. Therefore, by practicing FPTP, the large majority of votes play no role in determining the election outcome. To solve the problems with FPTP, Alternative Vote can be applied instead. In the FPTP system, the result of election is not accurate since a candidate wins only by gathering a little bit more votes than the second place. The winning candidate does not prove his or her ability by holding several votes more than the other. …show more content…
As for the 2010 election, fewer than 460,000 voters made the final decision. This was only 1.6% of the entire electorate. Recall the election results of 2005, 70% of the voters did not vote for the winning Labor Party. If there was a second round, those 70% of votes could be used to alter election outcomes. So, voters can use their vote again to appoint their second favorite candidates. In other works, vote would not be wasted even if it didn’t make it through the first round. As a result, AV additionally gives voters the chance to impact the initial