So, highlighting the issues with our existing election system (FPTP).

Using data from the 2007, 2010 and 2015 elections

A thread.

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So, first thing we need to do is recall the results of those elections. 2007 and 2015 were PNM victories and 2010 was a victory for the UNC led PP. How many seats out of the 41 are in the snip below.

Is this what the people voted for? Time to find out.

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The simple and a bit naive way to check this is by popular vote. Below is the percent of the vote and the percentage of seats held by each party.

Only one clear message sticks out from this data:

Be in the duopoly (UNC/PNM) or perish.

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The system inherently punishes any party which isnt the two major ones. 24% of the votes were for COP (and others) in 2007 and those people had ZERO representation in Parliament. Similarly in 2015 with 8% of the vote leading to a single seat.

2010 is weird cause coalition
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And what does this lead to?

Those who vote no longer vote for their best match in ideals, but more so for the party which is most likely to keep their worst match from power.

We no longer vote FOR a party, but more so AGAINST one.

This isnt healthy
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So how do we fix it?

It has its limitations, but I believe that Proportional Representation - Single Transferable Vote (PR-STV) is a valid solution.

This system is used for GE in and for regional cases in


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How does it work?
Gonna tackle the STV part first.

A voter would no longer mark their ballot with a single x, but now rank their options 1 to whatever.

This gives you the peace of mind to vote 3rd party without the same repercussions as in FPTP

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So lets do a hypothetical case:
1 MP with 4 candidates (F,G,H,J)

In the current system G would win with 70% OF VOTERS NOT WANTING THAT

Instead:
We go down the voters preferences until we get to a single candidate with a majority of votes (in this case >50%)

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So to avoid this, we now have to eliminate candidate F and distribute their votes to each voters second preference. We might now get something like this if F voters were mostly on board with candidate J and even spread between G and H

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Now we repeat this process with eliminating H and distributing their votes to G and J based on the VOTERS PREFERENCE.

Basically you get the ability to vote saying:

I really want X to win, but if they cant, I would like to vote for Y.

cool right?

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Now for the PR part of PR-STV.

This will come in like 30 mins cause I dont trust twitter to not crash this thread. See ya soon

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