[EM] Re: plurality, FPTP and runoff voting

[Bart Ingles]

I always thought the term would have been more descriptive of approval
voting.  To go with the Olympic sprint analogy, each runner has his or
her own lane to run in.  The presence of slower runners has no bearing
on the length of the race or on the amount of time it takes for the
winner to reach the finish line.

A good analogy for Plurality voting with two runners would be to have
the runners start at opposite ends of the same lane.  The runner who
gets the farthest before the inevitable head-on collision is the
plurality winner.  I don't know how to extend this to more than two
contestants; maybe a pie-eating contest where all participants nibble at
the same pie?

Bart



James Gilmour wrote:
> 
> 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.