Winner Take All vs. Proportional Representation

There are two basic families of voting systems. Winner-take-all systems elect the candidates who receive the most votes, thereby allowing 50.1% of voters to win 100% of representation. Proportional representation systems allow like-minded groupings of voters to elect representatives in proportion to their share of the vote.

The winner-take-all voting system holds as its central tenet that representation should be awarded to the candidates who receive the most votes. That principle may seem fair enough: everyone gets to vote, and the top vote-getters win. And certainly a candidate who wins likely will share many of the same ideas and values as the largest voting block in his or her constituency.

One clear downside to winner-take-all voting, however, is that losing candidates win nothing, even if they win substantial numbers of votes. In a two-candidate race, it is possible for 49.9% of voters to receive no representation. In a three-candidate race that number can climb to 66.6% - much more than half the electorate can actually oppose the candidate who has earned the right to "represent" it. Examples of such "plurality victories are common. Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton earned less than 45% of the vote in their initial presidential victories, and several American governors have been elected with less than 40% in the 1990's. In some nations such as Russia and Papua New Guinea, the number of candidacies have multiplied such that district elections regularly are won with less than 20% of votes.

By contrast, the proportional representation voting system allows like-minded groupings of voters to elect representatives to a government in direct proportion to their relative support within a multi-seat constituency. The first thing to be remembered about this system is that in fact it is a competition between parties, not individual candidates. Each party submits a list of candidates, ranked in order of preference. The Proportional system is designed to allocate 10% of the seals to a party or a slate of candidates that wins 10% of the vote, 25% of the seats to those taking 25% of the vote and a majority of the seats to those winning a majority of the vote. Contrast that last example with the winner-take-all system, in which a majority of the vote can win 100% of the representation, and one begins to understand the fundamental difference between the two systems. Advocates of proportional voting systems propose that the legislature should be more like a mirror of the population, with majority and minority viewpoints represented. They say that this system accurately translates the popular vote into representation, and thus is fairer to small parties giving them a chance of winning, white the first-past-the post system is undemocratic because it is unrepresentative

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