FPTP: Created by Winners to Choose Winners to Benefit Winners

It is very difficult to persuade people when they have been sold a bill of goods, but voters in Britain, Canada, and US have been scammed. For centuries.They have been told, “Our voting system, FPTP, is the only fair system.”
Three lies in nine words. Not bad.
First, our system, as it is set up, is not fair. “Fair” is a relative term, and fairness essentially comes from the mutual agreement of everyone in the system as to what rules shall apply. That works for sand-lot baseball. In the case of a political system, the rules have been decided upon by 40% of the electorate, and we are all playing the game, whether we like it or not. And in a democracy, if a whole bunch of people, no matter what the numbers, thinks something is unfair, then somebody needs to do something about it. If necessary, even change it. Maybe even if only 20% of the population is affected.
Second, FPTP is not the only fair system. There are democratic systems all over the world that are not FPTP and their voters think they are fair. If FPTP is so fair, why do none of the political parties in Canada use it to elect their leaders? Why does it take a simple majority plus the agreement of 66% of the provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution? France uses a two-round system to elect their presidents and legislators.
The reason is that a simple FPTP vote has several flaws, and the results can be easily affected in all sorts of ways. Especially by the people who are leaders in it.
Third – and this may surprise you – the system B. C. and Canada use to elect governments is not FPTP. FPTP is like a hockey game, right? You play the game, you score the goals, you count the score, and the team with the most goals wins.
No It Doesn’t.
FPTP winners would like us to believe that their system is fair, cheap and simple. Of course they do; they won in it. Bur beware the salesman who tells you, “It’s really simple. You just…yada, yada, yada.”
Yeah, sure. All the point’s he’s skimming over are the ones he doesn’t want you to know, the places where he has the advantages, the fine print that makes you take all the risks.
How Does It Add Up?
It all depends how you define “count the score.” If you count the score in a hockey game by our election system, you would score up each inning and give the game to the team that won the most innings. So if my team scores 3 goals in the first inning and your team scores once in each of the other two innings, then you win the game because you won the majority of innings. I doubt if your average hockey team would go for that sort of system.

It all goes back to the medieval battle. I put each of my champions up against one of your champions, and whoever has the most winners gets to rule. In the political arena, this is a completely artificial designation, decided on by the people who excelled at medieval warfare: the barons of England in 1215. And since it suited their competitive, overbearing personalities, they made sure the system stayed, attracting more of their ilk, until it became simply the way we do things.
And we haven’t changed it since.
Politics continues to be modelled on a struggle for power, where supporters of a politician ask, “What can you do for me?” And politicians recently are saying, “I’ll cut your taxes.”
If you look at politics in the wider picture, in the longer term, instead of saying, “What’s in if for me if we win?” you might be saying, “What if it was me when we lose?” Democracy means giving other people all the rights and advantages you want for yourself. Then when you need that help, you can ask for it.
It’s a matter of paying it forward. “What goes around comes around,” applies in positive ways as well.
FPTP means grabbing everything you can for yourself while you’re winning, because sooner or later someone else is going to come and take it all away from you. So the winners tend to grab what they can while they’re in power, and they get good at staying in power by manipulating the system any way they can. Think of RoboCalls and attack ads. FPTP results in unfair advantage for the establishment.
The version of FPTP that we use was created by winners to give the advantage to winners. It is not “The only fair way.” Yes, it’s the best we have been able to come up with until now, but we have made only two major improvements in the system in two centuries (secret ballot was introduced into Canada by British Columbia in 1853, and most {not aboriginal or Asian}women were given the vote federally in 1921). Now we have a chance to make another step forward. Do it for your children and grandchildren. Do it for the people who deserve to have their voices heard. Do it because some day, that may be you.

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