Single Winner Systems
PR is often contrasted with single winner electoral systems. The most common of these is the winner-takes-all (or "first-past-the-post") system common in some countries of the former British empire, such as the United States, the UK, Canada and India. Most nations use the alternative systems, described as forms of "proportional representation" (see table below). Single Winner Systems tend to promote strongest two-party competition as it is in the US and in Canada. Effectively it eliminates smaller parties from parliament.
Read more about this topic: Proportional Representation
Famous quotes containing the words single, winner and/or systems:
“Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I would be a winner because I was a loser! That’s right. I dream of failure every night of my life, and that’s my secret. To make it in this rat race you have to dream of failing every day. I mean, that is reality.”
—Donald Freed, U.S. screenwriter, and Arnold M. Stone. Robert Altman. Richard Nixon (Philip Baker Hall)
“Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)