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Advantages
- Very few restrictions on who can vote (apart from prisoners but the European Court of Human Rights ruling has said they should)
- Anybody can form a political party and compete in an election as long as their aims are lawful
- People can access independent information owing to free information and free media
- Elections usually deliver a democratic mandate to the ruling party (legitimacy)
- UK elections are overall free from corruption, making the result reliable
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Disadvantages
- Results are disproportional. FPTP discriminates in favour of parties with concentrated support and against smaller parties with dispersed support. The HofC that results is not representative of political opinion in the UK
- Governments are elected on a minority of the popular vote, which means they lack legitimacy as more people have voted against them than for them
- Larger parties have more funds to contest the election, giving them an artificial advantage. Liberal Democrats do not have as much money as the Labour and Conservative parties which have wealthy wealthy donors
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