[EM] Re: plurality, FPTP and runoff voting

[James Gilmour]

Rob Brown  > Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 6:40 PM
> BTW, I never understood where the term "first past the post" 
> comes from.  It  doesn't seem very descriptive. 
> Anyone have any insight into this?

You have obviously never seen a horse race!  "First past the post" (the winning post!) is a perfect
description of a single-member district election in which each voter marks only one "X" and the
candidate with the greatest number of Xs is declared the "winner" (ie elected).  It doesn't matter
how many or how few votes are cast in total (how fast or how slow the race is run), the candidate
with the greatest number (first to reach the post) is the winner.  It doesn't matter that my team
took second, third, fourth and fifth places in the race, if your team member was the first to reach
the winning post, your runner was the winner and there is only one "winner".  That happened time and
again in the recent Olympic Games  -  it was all about "winning", ie being first over the line =
first past the post.

I don't know who coined the phrase or when it was first used with reference to British elections.  I
cannot find a relevant historical reference in any of the on-line dictionaries and I don't have an
Athens (university) password to access the on-line version of the Oxford English Dictionary.

James