The United Kingdom election had a terribly unfair voting system which meant that while Farage’s Reform Party received 14.3% of the vote but only ended up with five seats. This is because the UK uses a simple majority system, which is often referred to as first past the post.

The great advantage of the simple majority is that it’s simple enough that even Rowan Dean can understand it; the great disadvantage is that it can throw up some strange results when you have candidates with similar views all contesting the same seat. For example, if you had a vote between the best PM in the past ten years your choices would be between Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Albanese. Obviously, while some Labor voters may not choose Albanese, the Liberal vote is going to be split between the other three meaning that a figure as low as 32% might be enough to get him over the line…

If, on the other hand, it was a preferential system like we have in Australia, then assuming the same 32% for Albanese wouldn’t be enough to get him elected. We’d eliminate the candidate with the lowest number and distribute his preferences. If no candidate had more than fifty percent after that, we’d keep going until that happened.

While this would appear to be a fairer system........

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