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Comment by giobox | Hacker News Reader

FPTP elections are broken almost anywhere they are used, because FPTP’s only real positive feature is that it is simple to understand. It demonstrably rarely delivers electoral results that actually reflect the desires of the electorate.

Combine FPTP with the electoral college system and you get arguably absurd presidential outcomes like we saw in 2016, where the winning candidate can receive less votes than the runner up and still win. Huge majorities on minority shares are often found in FPTP systems, because anyone who didn’t vote for the winning candidate might as well have not voted. It can also create the opposite outcomes, minority seat shares in the legislature on majority vote shares.

It’s just a plain bad voting system if you believe the legislature should at least vaguely reflect the wishes of voters.

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FPTP did exactly what it was designed to do during 2016. It stopped extremely lopsided states like California and new York (6 million vote difference right there).

The Electoral College did that, not FPTP.

FPTP elections are where the candidate with the most votes wins. By that definition, it ALWAYS delivers results that reflect the desires of the electorate. I think you're overstating it when you say that it leads to situations where anyone who didn't vote for the winning candidate might as well have not voted. I think it's more accurate to say that every vote mattered, but the voters who pushed the leading candidate above the runner up mattered more.

Of course, the underlying problem with those situations is that minorities are ignored via the tyranny of the majority. So if you think the presidential outcome was absurd because Hillary received the majority of votes you're arguing that in just this particular election ignoring the minority, and going solely by majority vote, would have been a good thing. You can't pick and choose like that.

Combining FPTP with the electoral college did what it was supposed to, it compensated for the tyranny of the majority.

> FPTP elections are where the candidate with the most votes wins. By that definition, it ALWAYS delivers results that reflect the desires of the electorate.

How is this tautology helpful at all? Why would we want this definition of what the most desirable candidate is?

It's also plain wrong. Candidates win on minority shares in FPTP regularly, especially when there is more than two candidates.

In the UK for example, it's pretty common to win your seat with just 40% or less of the vote. The desires of 60% or more of the electorate in that constituency is simply ignored - a majority can vote for someone else entirely, hardly a reflection of the electorate's desire.

> I think you're overstating it when you say that it leads to situations where anyone who didn't vote for the winning candidate might as well have not voted.

I'm really not. The outcome remains the EXACT SAME if everyone who voted for a losing candidate stays at home. This isn't really my opinion - it's a widely known limitation of FPTP electoral systems.

For you to think that your vote doesn't count would mean you know in advance that your candidate will lose. You don't.

Maybe not, but if you're voting for a third party you can know that there's, say, a 99.9% chance your vote won't count.

FPTP with the electoral college makes my vote count for nothing voting in a solid red or blue state. I despise this fact. Elections only really focus on swing states and thus swing states have undue influence.

The point of the election is not that you get to decide the election, it's that the nation collectively decides the election.

"The nation" isn't just swing states.

Sure. That's why California has 55 electoral votes.

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