WikipediaExtracts:First-past-the-post voting
Extracted from Wikipedia --
First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or first-preference, and the candidate with more first-preference votes than any other candidate (a plurality) is elected, even if they do not have more than half of votes (a majority).
FPP has been used to elect part of the British House of Commons since the Middle Ages before spreading throughout the British Empire. Throughout the 20th century, many countries that previously used FPP have abandoned it in favor of other electoral systems, including the former British colonies of Australia and New Zealand. FPP is still officially used in the majority of US states for most elections. However, the combination of partisan primaries and a two-party system in these jurisdictions means that most American elections behave effectively like two-round systems, in which the first round chooses two main contenders (of which one of them goes on to receive a majority of votes).
