by Emily Adams

Created on: June 21, 2008

Although first-past-the-post electoral system has been in place in Britain since the House of Commons was established, movements to change the electoral system have been prevalent since the first Reform Act in 1832. It is often seen as unfair, undemocratic, and an unrepresentative system of government, and while it does entail the availability of strong constituency links, produce majority governments, and enhance accountability, I do not believe it is to be recommended.

Britain's' history of majority rule runs deep, but at its origin it was simply thought of as representing the community. Britain has always associated itself with the idea of representing community; the House of Commons was originally a house of communities with each local community returning two representatives to the Commons. In 1430 the principal of election by relative majority was passed and between 1868 and 1922 there were 110 uncontested elections. This was anything but a phenomenon however; during that period "uncontested constituencies in each general election tended to be regarded as the norm". This preceded the nationalization of politics and the growth of modern political parties, yet as we can see, unrepresentative democracy is so inherent in the system that it encouraged one-man uncontested elections. At its conception, the first-past-the-post system assumed that "the proper units of representation were geographical constituencies which were integers with particular interests of their own", but a break occurred as party politics evolved. "Party feeling Members of Parliament" are now widespread, and because they represent party opinions and interests rather than geographical constituencies, allegations of gerrymandering-the deliberate mutilation of a voting district to give unfair advantage to one party in elections- have reached a new importance.
The fundamental principal of elective democracy is the equal value of votes cast during an election, regardless of the status of people it comes from. The responsibility of ensuring this lies in the hands of those who draw up the boundaries of the various electoral units. The Local Government Boundary Commission was created to ensure that districts are drawn to encourage regularity in population distribution, but while the Commission may be able to determine that the equality in ward size technically meets this value, it "does not necessarily also ensure equality of representation: as many studies of electoral outcomes have shown, there

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