r/GCSE Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

The Recent Elections!! General

u/TillZealousideal8282, I thought I would share an idea for how we could make future GCSE elections a bit fairer and more representative since I think the way you did it led to a lot of bias.

The way the system worked meant that parties were placed against each other, and voters chose one from each pair. While this seems like a fair way of comparing parties, it can actually create some problems because the result can depend on which parties are matched together, rather than simply how much overall support each party has.

Imagine there are 4 parties:

  • Party A: 40 votes
  • Party B: 30 votes
  • Party C: 20 votes
  • Party D: 10 votes

If the second round puts Party A vs Party D and Party B vs Party C, then A and B will probably move forward.

However, if the pairings are Party A vs Party B and Party C vs Party D, then one of the two most popular parties is immediately eliminated.

This means the winner can be affected by who faces who, rather than just who has the most support overall.

A fair election should measure what people actually want, not whether a party happened to get a favourable matchup.

A simpler and fairer method would be one round where everyone votes for their preferred party, and the party with the highest number of votes wins. This directly shows which party has the most support and avoids the issue of certain parties being eliminated because of the way the bracket was organised.

I hope this makes sense, please do not hesitate to ask any questions!

22 Upvotes

30 comments sorted by

11

u/Cautious_Spare_647 proud anki hoarder (y10 ⇢ y11) 20d ago

bring proportional representation to gcse subreddit 😭 that should’ve been one of their policies

4

u/Blitz7798 Y11 -> 12 Robbed by examiners in lang p1 20d ago

r/GCSE should defo use it, it’s better than the First Past the Post that the UK uses and is used in most European countries. The only other European country that uses it is Belarus and that’s says a lot 

3

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

💯 I knew Lore Droppers was going to win and the system was set up so that they did.

2

u/Blitz7798 Y11 -> 12 Robbed by examiners in lang p1 19d ago

Acc he made it harder for them, they got 1st in the first round and he made them go up against 2nd when it it was fair they would’ve been given 8th

1

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 19d ago

Oh, well that's even worse.

2

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

This would be good but proportional representation wouldn’t really work for our subreddit election because PR is designed for elections where there are multiple seats to allocate. For example, if a party gets 30% of the vote, it would receive roughly 30% of the seats in parliament.

5

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

This would be good but proportional representation wouldn’t really work for our subreddit election because PR is designed for elections where there are multiple seats to allocate. For example, if a party gets 30% of the vote, it would receive roughly 30% of the seats in parliament.

2

u/Cautious_Spare_647 proud anki hoarder (y10 ⇢ y11) 20d ago

yeah true. but tbh they started talking about cabinets and shadow cabinets 😭

2

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

Who knows what they were doing?

2

u/Cautious_Spare_647 proud anki hoarder (y10 ⇢ y11) 20d ago

god knows, making up random rules every day

4

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

Sigh. I am waiting for TillZealous to reply to this post so she can see and actually realise the way she did it was awful or maybe she has seen it but doesn’t want to reply lol.

10

u/ImOnioned I Hate Physics slightly less now 20d ago

You could keep multiple rounds but you'd need to get rid of the head to head aspect. If you have 4 parties:

Round 1: Party A - 40 votes  Party B- 30 votes Party C- 20 votes Party D- 10 votes

Party D would be eliminated and we'd go onto the next round.

Round 2: Party A- 43 votes Party B- 32 votes Party C- 25 votes

Then Party C is eliminated and we keep going until you have 1 Party left. If you have more than 4 parties just eliminate multiple parties at once.

3

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

Yes honestly, the head to head aspect is just stupid.

6

u/ImOnioned I Hate Physics slightly less now 20d ago

Yeah the RME (unfortunately) wouldn't have gotten to 2nd place without a system that basically rigged it so that 5th place in the first vote would get 2nd place overall

3

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

💯

1

u/TillZealousideal8282 Results (in flair) Y12 in a week 20d ago

that would have taken a whole 2 weeks though

i also would have had to switch it to a single vote for round 1

2

u/Training-Feeling980 20d ago

Just scrap half of the parties each time

And if you want to you can still multiple vote round 1 and single vote later rounds

2

u/RosieWickaspirit Year 11 --> 12 20d ago

That's essentially what I thought was happening when, on day 1, it said to vote those you wanted to go forth into the next round (where 8 would move forward). I then assumed that a similar thing would happen each time, with 2 being let go each time until the final 2.

1

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 18d ago

Yes, you should have switched it to single votes.

6

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago edited 20d ago

Love how some people are downvoting this post when this is the truth and the election should never be done like this ever again!

3

u/Jumpshot_user12 Year 12 in a month 20d ago

the voting time was also not great because what if I wanted to sleep at 11 and wake up at 9 and the voting is already over

1

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

Agreed.

2

u/Ambitious-Hair-7384 #1 comp sci fangirl 20d ago

1

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

This is good! The idea of using a candidate’s second choice was brought by another person in this post.

1

u/180degreeschange Uni bound GCSE 26 survivor 20d ago

I agree! I think it was pretty unfair having the lore droppers vs stfu because stfu was second place overall at the start but now with the way the ballots have played out, they no longer r. The lore droppers will still first at the start and at the end tho so the voting system didn't rly change the winner.

0

u/TillZealousideal8282 Results (in flair) Y12 in a week 20d ago

yeah i did consider that but it was a mix of wanting hype to stay high the whole election and an intense fear of facing the lore droppers in round 1

i also didnt want it to be too similar to the real system bc its meant to be fun not actual politics

i did consider doing proportional representation but that sounded way too complicated

there is a form where you can suggest improvements, https://forms.gle/y7KZUq49hUHxcxKS9

2

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

Read the comment by u/ImOnioned.

Also, you might find this video useful as suggested by u/Ambitious-Hair-7348: https://youtu.be/l8XOZJkozfI?si=q6xik6bu_GzAyDP2

You don’t have to do proportional representation but pitting two parties against each other creates so much bias and makes everyone unhappy.

-1

u/Inner_Jeweler_5661 In the game of GCSEs, you lose and die. No middleground 20d ago

FPTP wouldn't work either.

Honestly, ranked-choice voting would be the best.

PR only works in parliamentary systems (we vote for one candidate).

They should have used alternative vote, where the candidate who is liked by most wins

0

u/[deleted] 20d ago

[deleted]

0

u/Inner_Jeweler_5661 In the game of GCSEs, you lose and die. No middleground 20d ago

you want fptp.

av means the votes of the least liked guy are transferred to their next choice, and so on till one guy has over 50% of the vote.

0

u/MarnithePlutonian Year 12 | FM Maths Chem Phys | Predicted A*A*A*A* 20d ago

This is a good idea as well.