[EM] Plurality == FPTP right?

[Jack Santucci]

Political scientist here. Please don't pelt me with rotten fruit.

We generally use three categories to differentiate electoral systems. The
number of categories depends on who's writing, but everyone pretty much
agrees on three: district magnitude (1 in your case), ballot type
(categorical in your case), and then allocation rule (plurality in your
case).

Shugart, Latner, and I argued here
<https://protectdemocracy.org/work/toward-a-different-kind-of-party-government/>
 that 'FPFP' did not really exist in the US due to the widespread use of
primaries, some of which have been replaced with nonpartisan winnowing
rounds (AK, CA, etc). FWIW, Burnett and Kogan (2015) noted
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2519723> this elision
in their conclusion nearly a decade ago.

Other examples of plurality allocation with categorical ballots *and
multi-seat districts*:
- multiple non-transferable vote (incl. as limited voting)
- single non-transferable vote (incl. as limited voting)
- cumulative voting
- etc...

I generally stay quiet, but this issue is fundamental enough, I think, to
merit the above contribution. FPTP often comes across as an imaginary
target.

A purist might insist on calling IRV 'plurality' as well, so long as it
does not require the voter to rank all choices.

Jack


On Mon, May 6, 2024 at 3:10 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:

> I just need to double-check I haven't gone completely insane and both of
> these terms really are synonyms. Comments on the talk page would be helpful:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Plurality_voting#Merge_from_FPTP
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
> info
>
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