this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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you didn't read anything I said
And if you did, you missed the point
Point was: prevent the worst by using this system, which can easily be adopted by any government that originally had a FPTP system into a system with two elections for electing seats and another for run-off presidential elections
Though, because of gerrymandering and how the system for electing seats may still be FPTP, it'll still be damn awful
I think Britain uses this system for something to research if you're interested
I’m Canadian. I’m familiar with FPTP
They do and it's absolute dogshit, as a country that has more than 2 parties present in Parliament, which a healthy democracy should have, mathematically majority of the country is going to end up with an unwanted prime minister, usually 1 of the 2 largest parties. CGP Grey n veritasium explained the maths behind it and why it's mathematically less democratic than proportional representation
The states have it as well but on the extreme end, where it's a duopoly shared by two both shit and corrupt parties.
Yeah, it's ass, I was thinking of CGP Gray when I thought of Britain, but I would say it isn't as ass as USA, the there are obvious and large(r) alternative parties available if they ever become big enough
(I am not British nor American)
14 parties in parliament is not at all bad going.
If the UK had PR the country would never have a stable enough Government to be able to do any kind of internally consistent planning or policy. Having a government that has the ability to take executive actions and pass legislation is kind of important, otherwise you get into a mess of every individual bill getting co-opted and twisted by wildly different competing interests, all of whom are required to get it over the line. The Cabinet would become functionally useless, since none of the Transport, Education, Health etc secretaries would have the power to enact anything.
The one time in recent history that we did have a hung parliament, the Lib Dems' participation in it was considered a massive betrayal that killed their support for a whole decade. This is what we'd be forced into every time under PR. (EDIT: oh wait I forgot the DUP, which was an even bigger shitshow of a tiny bunch of hatemongers suddenly arbitrarily getting to punch above their weight, ironically very undemocratically)
The system is working as designed, and it was designed to prefer stability over representation.
It's also misleading to suggest PR wouldn't also result in "mathematically majority of the country is going to end up with an unwanted prime minister", since it's always going to be the case regardless; the best you can do is some mathematical jiggery-pokery to force people to choose between two candidates they didn't want in the first place, so you can turn around and say hey look you got who you voted for. Now which country does that remind us of?