system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What exactly is 'First past the post' voting?

(Sorry if it's the wrong flair, culture was the closest I saw on my phone.)

I've been to the Wikipedia article and maybe I missed the explanation but I don't really get it.

Also I only recently got interested in politics.
gpt
FPTP is the voting method most people recognize, where the person or option that gets the most votes becomes the elected choice. The name is a reference to a race, where one person wins and everybody else, no matter how many, are all losers. That's why this form of voting gets a lot of flak; when there are lots of people or options in the vote, the amount any one needs to have the "most" can be quite small, and the number of people who don;t get their voice heard can be quite large. If 100 people are voting to paint their apartment building either white or beige, then 51 people is a pretty good chunk of the tenants if only a slight majority; but if every tenant had a different color choice, then the two old ladies who liked magenta would win, and the other 98 people would be pissed off.