In defence of first past the post

Here comes a new law in political science: Joe’s Law. As I write, the Republic of Ireland is still working out, after its general election, what sort of a coalition government will be entailed by its system of proportional representation. And the Germans are fretting already about whether and how a new coalition might be put together, the last one having disintegrated. A new election looms, held according to Germany’s ‘personalised proportional representation’ voting system.

Joe, meanwhile, is a first cousin twice removed whom I didn’t even know. He’s 16, and has a paper to write about our ‘first past the post’ (FPTP) voting system. Joe contacted me via his grandfather, my first cousin. We met on Zoom for a lengthy discussion, and from the back-and-forth I developed what is for me a new and (I believe) strong argument in favour of FPTP: a repudiation of all those rival voting systems we call proportional representation (PR).