I woke up this morning thinking about the name First Past the Post and the image it actually conjours up. It sounds like a racing analogy, with a post being a fixed point at the end of a race course with all the runners (candidates) trying to be the first one to get there, until eventually one of them does. Hang on, that sounds like AV, doesn't it? A fixed point, say, a 50% +1 majority with iterations of elimination and redistribution of votes until ultimately one candidate reaches that post and is the first to do so.
The current system, the one actually known as FPTP doesn't do that at all. I think a better name for it would be something like "Early Front Runner", where the winner is actually a racer who gets off to a good start ,pulls ahead early on in the race, say at about the 30% mark, regardless of whether or not they're able to go the distance. At that point the race is over and awarded to them and then the racer doesn't even HAVE to finish the race.
And if you want an example of how wrong this is, look no further than the most famous race-orientated story ever, the Hare and the Tortoise. Under the current system, the Hare would have won, despite getting incredibly arrogant and lazy and falling asleep instead of even bothering to finish the job. The Tortoise, in this analogy represents a candidate who takes as many voters' views into consideration as possible and slowly but surely makes sure that his constituents are fairly represented rather than taking the quick and easy route to election victory.
The truth is that FPTP was designed for situations where there are only two candidates. It works perfectly when that is the case. There is a post, and it's the 50% that one or the other candidate passes to win the seat. What AV is is a modification of FPTP to ensure that there's still a 50% mark post to pass when there are more than two candidates.
Politics is VERY much about going the distance. It's not about getting your nose in front early on and then relaxing knowing that you're safely home and dry before you've even bothered to get near "the post". To use my favourite football malapropism, it's a marathon, not a snickers.
Whilst there may not be a "post" in individual FPTP elections - there is when you take it into a race for a majority in parliament i.e. that you need 326 seats to win altho AV will have the same post in terms of government well it will be 301 with the reduction of MPs.
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