Financial Times endorses voting reform for UK
Financial Times, September 6, 2010
"Britain’s existing arrangement – first-past-the-post – used to work well when elections were overwhelmingly dominated by the two main parties, but no longer does now that smaller parties attract substantial support. The problem with FPTP is simple. As there are no prizes for coming second, voters who do not think their favoured candidate can win cast votes for other representatives. This drives voters to the two big parties and under-represents smaller ones.
The alternative vote system gets round this by allowing citizens to rank their choices and requiring that candidates get half the votes to win. If no one achieves this, the last-placed candidate is eliminated and their supporters’ votes pass to the next choices. This continues until someone has a majority.
AV is not ideal. Many seats will remain uncompetitive, and parties with concentrations of support will still do better than those with a shallower national following. But it is better than FPTP given a multi-party system."