thoughtfulBut the way this election is turning out shows what a bad idea first-past-the-post voting is when there are more than two significant parties. The BBC don't help by using the word "majority" to describe the spread between the first and second-place candidates, even when it's clear that the winner had as much as two-thirds of the voters selecting a different candidate. I think instant runoff voting would have made a big difference here, although I admit it probably means some of the fringe right-wing, isolationist, racist parties would have picked up a fair bit more first-place votes as well. But that's not such a bad thing, either, as when one of the lower-placed parties' candidates dropped, you'd be able to see exactly where the other parties' support is coming from, and that seems valuable to me.
However, I doubt that IRV will be implemented, since everyone seems to be saying that some sort of proportional representation is more likely, assuming any sort of represenation reform happens at all.
