First-Past-the-Post Voting Used for Electing Members of the House of Commons

• 05.06.2015, 23:10
•  Europe,  World,  Info

In several hours general elections will start in the United Kingdom. These elections are called to be one of the most competitive elections. The two main parties - the Labour and the Conservative parties have almost equal chances and in such a case it is very difficult, if not say impossible to predict which party will receive the majority of the votes.

The Parliament of the UK is the highest legislative body that has two parliamentary bodies, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The members of the House of Commons are being elected by majority electoral system from various different political parties and elections are held every five years. There are 650 constituencies in the UK, in each of them one deputy is being elected.

 The system currently used to elect members of the House of Commons is called First-Past-the-Post (FPTP), according to which the voter simply puts a cross in a box next to one candidate. The candidate with the most votes in the constituency wins, CAER reports.

In the case of majority voting system there can be an inconsistency of the received mandates with the votes received in the whole country. However, the voter has an opportunity to assess the candidate's personal values rather than vote for a faceless party list.

As for the House of Lords, as expatica.com writes, it includes three types of members, Bishops from the Church of England, nobility (British honors system) and Law Lords (Judges). Its members are not elected and appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minster. In the 20^th century the powers of the House of Lords was significantly limited. The House of Lords debates legislation, and can amend or reject bills. It has now the right to put a veto to temporarily postpone adoption of a bill in the lower House (until 1949 it had the right to block any bill).