Editing Plurality voting (section)

=== In some plurality systems ===

==== Fewer political parties ====
{{more citations needed section|date=October 2018}}
[[File:Percentage graph UK POLITICS 2005.png|right|thumb|A graph showing the difference between the popular vote and the number of seats won by major political parties at the [[2005 United Kingdom general election]]]]

[[Duverger's law]] is a theory that constituencies that use first-past-the-post systems will eventually become a [[two-party system]] after enough time.<ref name="GrofmanBlais2009">{{cite book |last1=Grofman |first1=Bernard |last2=Blais |first2=André |last3=Bowler |first3=Shaun |title=Duverger's Law of Plurality Voting: The Logic of Party Competition in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2BudCN3zBCoC |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |date=5 March 2009 |isbn=978-0-387-09720-6}}</ref> The two dominating parties regularly alternate in power and easily win constituencies due to the structure of plurality voting systems.<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last=Blais |first=André |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/470918525 |title=To keep or to change first past the post? : the politics of electoral reform |date=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-953939-0 |oclc=470918525}}</ref> This puts smaller parties who struggle to meet the threshold of votes at a disadvantage, and inhibits growth.<ref name=":6" />

Plurality voting tends to reduce the number of political parties to a greater extent than most other methods do, making it more likely that a single party will hold a majority of legislative seats. (In the United Kingdom, 22 out of 27 general elections since 1922 have produced a single-party majority government or, in the case of the National Governments, a parliament from which such a single-party government could have been drawn.)

Plurality voting's tendency toward fewer parties and more-frequent majorities of one party can also produce a government that may not consider as wide a range of perspectives and concerns. It is entirely possible that a voter finds all major parties to have similar views on issues, and that a voter does not have a meaningful way of expressing a dissenting opinion through their vote.

As fewer choices are offered to voters, voters may vote for a candidate although they disagree with them because they disagree even more with their opponents. That will make candidates less closely reflect the viewpoints of those who vote for them.

Furthermore, one-party rule is more likely to lead to radical changes in government policy even though the changes are favoured only by a plurality or a bare majority of the voters, but a multi-party system usually requires more consensus to make dramatic changes in policy.

==== Voter turnout ====
[[Political apathy]] is prevalent in plurality voting systems such as [[First-past-the-post voting|FPTP]].<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last1=Kwiatkowska |first1=Agnieszka |last2=Cześnik |first2=Mikołaj |date=2020-12-16 |title=Electoral System, Political Knowledge and Voter Turnout— Complex Liaisons |url=https://polish-sociological-review.eu/Electoral-System-Political-Knowledge-and-Voter-Turnout-nComplex-Liaisons,131723,0,2.html |journal=Polish Sociological Review |language=english |volume=212 |issue=4 |pages=425–444 |doi=10.26412/psr212.03 |issn=1231-1413}}</ref> Studies suggest that plurality voting system fails to incentivize citizens to vote, which results in very low [[voter turnout]]s.<ref name=":3" /> Under this system, many people feel that voting is an empty ritual that has no influence on the composition of legislature.<ref name=":2" /> Voters are not assured that the number of seats that political parties are accorded will reflect the popular vote, which disincentivizes them from voting and sends the message that their votes are not valued, and participation in elections does not seem necessary.<ref name=":3" />

==== Spoiled ballots ====
{{Expand section|date=April 2024}}