I believe that there should be electoral reform in Britain. The current system is outdated, and there are several other options that make more political sense than the current system. However, there are differing opinions on the issue, and, as it is not essential to change it, it is likely that the current government will not take the risk of splitting their support by putting into motion such a controversial policy.
The current electoral system employed for the general election is the First-past-the-post system. This is a majoritarian system. Some people prefer this system to the alternatives, and it's main advantages are that it is proven to work, and simple to understand. However, it has many disadvantages as well, and I believe that this is unacceptable in a system that is used so highly. Some disadvantages are that often a majority of the voters in a constituency vote against the winner, and this could be seen as undemocratic, and, possibly the most blatant disadvantage of the system, that it is possible for the majority of the voters to vote for one party, while another party actually gets more seats and therefore wins the election.
The alternative to the majoritarian First-past-the-post system would be a proportional system, such as the Party List system, or a Hybrid system, such as the Additional member system. The advantage of a more proportional system would be that every candidate would need to gain more than 50% of the vote in order to be elected, so there would be no more quirks regarding the seats:votes ratio. There would also be no "wasted" votes, as there is in the FPP system. The Party list system has two variations: open and closed. In an open party list, the party chooses a list of candidates, and the constituents vote for their favourite. In the closed variety of the system, the constituents vote only for the party that they choose, not for the MP's. This was the system used to elect MP's to the European parliament recently.
