This explains elections with Single Member Plurality (SMP) / First Past the Post voting (FPTP), which this project proposes to upgrade to Condorcet/Ranked Pairs. While FPTP is simple and easy to do, when there are more than two candidates it is prone to significant problems:
- Single round of voting: Each Voter marks a single candidate on a single ballot.
- Single round of counting: The ballots are tallied, allocating votes to candidates based on their single/first-preference choice.
- Simple outcome: The candidate who receives the most votes — wins.
- It’s Easy to understand, easy to do, easy to count.
Issues
| Two Candidates | Three or More Candidates |
- Works well.
- Chooses the candidate who is preferred by the majority.
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- Tends no longer to render the decision of the majority, but of the largest minority of voters.
- If their true first preference is not a “likely” contender, voters will tend to shift their vote to one of the presumed contenders (Duverger’s law); press and opinion polls have an enhanced effect.
- Hard for smaller, or newer parties, or independents to make headway; discourages competition.
- Spoiler Effect: A candidate seen as similar to another candidate will reduce support from the similar candidate — a candidate who might have won can lose as a consequence of a “similar” candidate entering the competition.
- Outcome not necessarily most preferred by the majority of voters, and can, in fact, be least preferred. This is NOT a Condorcet method.
- Candidates/Parties need only to appeal-to and be accountable-to a small “base”of supporters.
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Next: Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV)
