On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 13:10:14 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Various alternatives have been tried for centuries now without
anything which is obviously better being found.

You mean across the world?

Yep.

Because just getting everyone a FPTP vote at all has only happened in
the last century.

Separate issue to how the voting system is done rather than who gets to
vote.

Have we every had any other type of voting system?

By "we", do you mean the UK?

We have d'Hondt regional PR in use currently. Everybody moans about it.
We had a referendum over AV. It got thrown out by a huge majority.
STV is used in Northern Ireland.

There are _dozens_ of different voting systems, some in real-world use,
some not. Some simple, some mind-meltingly complex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system