MILLIONS of British people will today visit their local polling station to cast their vote in the general election.
The UK uses a first-past-the-post voting system instead of proportional representation which is used in other countries.
What is proportional representation?
Proportional representation (PR) is an electoral system in which the distribution of seats corresponds closely with the proportion of the total votes cast for each party.
For example, if a party gained 40 per cent of the total votes, a perfectly proportional system would allow them to gain 40 per cent of the seats.
Some believe PR is a more fair way of voting.
This is because under the voting system, established parties have an unfair advantage over smaller one who may have large support in individual constituencies but have very little clout in Parliament.
However others argue that PR weakens the link between the elected representative and their constituency.
Why doesn't the UK use proportional representation?
In 2011, the British public were asked in a referendum on whether they wanted to change the system to the alternative vote (AV).
AV is slightly different to PR as voters are asked to put a number by each candidate, with a one for their favourite, 2 for their second favourite and so on.
They can put numbers on as many or as few as they wish.
A candidate will be elected if more than half the voters put them down as their favourite.
If nobody gets half, the numbers provide instructions for where to move your vote if your favourite candidate can’t win.
The candidate who came last is eliminated and the counters look at these instructions to move the votes of the people who voted for them to their second favourite candidate.
This process continues until one candidate has half of the votes and is elected.
However in the voting referendum, more than two thirds of British people said "no".
Which countries use proportional representation?
A number of countries across the globe chose to use the PR voting system.
Those in Europe include Cyprus, Spain and Greece.
Outside of Europe, Brazil and South Africa are among the countries which use PR.
What is first-past-the-post?
In the UK General Election the first-past-the-post system is used.
The country is divided into 650 constituencies, each with one Member of Parliament (MP).
People can then vote for who they want to represent them as their MP to sit in the UK Parliament in Westminster.
The winning MP then has a "seat" in the House of Commons – if one political party manages to obtain 326 then they have an overall majority and are seen as the winner.
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