Write a 7 pages paper on what should the best electoral system look like.
There are advocates of non-proportional plurality and proportional electoral systems alike, the merits of all these differing electoral systems to constitutional designers will be assessed, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each electoral system in turn. Constitutional designers would have to consider the merits of each electoral system depending on what their objectives were, for instance, whether proportionality was considered to be more important than strong government or vice versa. If the sole political objective of any group of constitutional designers was to help establish a strong government they could look to introduce a non-proportional plurality electoral system.
The electoral system that would provide the best example for constitutional designers is the simple plurality system. The simple plurality system is better known as the first past the post system. Britain is the best example of a country that actually uses the first past the post system to elect MPs to the House of Commons, which its advocate’s claim produces strong government, and it also creates a strong line between MPs and their parliamentary constituencies.
1 Under the first past the post system the candidate with the most number of votes wins the parliamentary seat, it does matter about the size of their majority, all they need is one more vote than their nearest rival. The way in which the first past the post system operates has favored two main parties, originally the Conservatives and Liberal parties, with the Labour party replacing the liberals from the 1930s.
2 The period between 1945 and 1974 was the heyday of the two-party systems in Britain with the Liberals only having MPs due to electoral arrangements with the Conservatives. The first past the post system has except for rare occasions produced governments with a workable parliamentary majority. .