AV vs FPTP — the short(er) version « Gowers's Weblog

Posted by Owen Densmore on Aug 27, 2011; 4:48pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/AV-vs-FPTP-the-short-er-version-Gowers-s-Weblog-tp6732526.html

Brit friends of mine .. what is the impact of AV vs FPTP in your opinion?  Apparently the country voted against AV recently which seems a bit odd but then it may be difficult to communicate the advantage, thus folks stay with what they know.

My understanding is the FPTP is that the majority vote determines the winner, while AV is a multipass vote where you rank your preferences, the loser of each round is removed from the vote, and first to get to more than 50% wins.  It is one of the many "fair vote" ideas:

http://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/av-vs-fptp-the-shorter-version/

As I understand it, AV has the advantage of more evenly distributing the vote based on voter preference while FPTP tends to create heavy preference from slight preferences .. an "attractor".

        -- Owen

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