The Single Transferable Vote Should Be Used to Elect Both the Westminster Parliament and the Scottish Parliament. Discuss.

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The Single Transferable Vote should be used to elect both the Westminster Parliament and the Scottish Parliament. Discuss. Currently in the UK, we use various different voting systems to elect different parts of our government structure. The Additional Members System (AMS) is used to elect the Scottish Parliament, while the First Past the Post System (FPTP) is used to elect those at Westminster. Both of these systems have their own advantages and disadvantages, but it can be argued that using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) would be a better choice for electing both the Scottish Parliament and Westminster. The STV would be a good system to use to elect our Government as it gives a higher degree of proportional representation, which means that the percentage of votes a party gets, is almost equal to the number of seats they receive in Parliament – 48% of the votes may get roughly 45% of the seats. The AMS gives an even higher degree of proportional representation, meaning that if a party gets 63% of the vote, they then receive 63% of this seats. This is a much fairer system than that of FPTP, on the other hand, which creates disproportionate results. A party that receives a relatively low number of votes may end up getting an unfairly high percentage of the seats. This shows that STV and AMS give a much more representative view of the people than FPTP. As FPTP gives a result that is not proportionally representative, many votes are wasted in the course of an election. Votes for smaller parties, and independent MPS may make no difference, as FPTP tends to favour the bigger, more well established parties. However, as AMS and STV give a much more proportional election result, the chances of voted being wasted are much less likely, as election results are based on the percentages of the vote that each party or MP recieve. While AMS gives a better proportional
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