‘The Irish electoral system of PR-STV is fundamentally flawed and should be replaced by the Single Member Plurality System (commonly referred to as ‘first past the post’)’.
Critically analyse the above statement with a comparison between the two systems identified.

1631 words (including bibliography)

Firstly, what is an election system? In my eyes it’s a means of finding the most popular outcome by converting votes casted in an election into government seats. However there countless different types of election systems and the two which we are going to look into and scrutinise right now is the PR-STV system and the Single Member Plurality system. Before delving further into the above controversial statement we must fully understand the meaning and results of both of these systems, beginning with the PR-STV (Proportional Representation-Single Transferable Vote) system.
The PR-STV system is by far the least popular of these two systems in terms of countries it is used in, only being used in Ireland and Malta to help elect our (and their) National Parties. It runs on a basis of casting your vote in order of most preferred to least preferred. A quota is then announced and the those who reach the quota is deemed elected and their excess votes are put back in the system and goes towards the next electable candidate on the ballot sheet.
The Single Member Plurality system (sometimes known as the ‘first past the post system’) differs greatly and is a lot less complicated than the PR-STV system. The candidate(s) with the most number of votes is simply declared the winner.
Both these systems have a number of pros and cons to them, but which one has the most advantages? Which one is most effective?

The PR-STV System
The PR-STV system was introduced as the Irish electoral system in 1922 and has been there ever since, although it