Should Malaysia’s First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system be retained after correcting the chronic malpractices (malapportionment, gerrymandering, cyclical seat increase) or be replaced by some other system to discourage communal politics and incentivise policy-based competition because there is an inherent mismatch between FPTP and divided societies? The debate can take very different forms depending on the alternative proposed: a completely new electoral system, or a hybrid system that retains FPTP but dilutes its impacts. In the first direction, Prof Donald Horowitz (2023) has powerfully argued against a radical shift from a pure FPTP system to a pure Closed-List Proportional Representation (CLPR) system, proposed by the Government’s Electoral Reform Committee (ERC) in 2020. Taking on the second direction, this presentation argues that retaining a full FPTP is undesirable on three counts. First, interstate malapportionment and cyclical seat increase cannot be overcome within FPTP unless the political elites accept interstate reapportionment of seats. Second, FPTP suppresses the emergence of non-communal parties that can make identity politics over ethnicity, religion and language less important. The benefit in this regard outweighs the risk of producing new parties that are even more communalist in outlook. Third, instead of moderating ethnic-based parties, FPTP produces ‘winner-takes-all’ outcomes that drive ethnic insecurities and outbidding. Continuing with FPTP, Malaysia may revert to another one-coalition predominance, but with a stronger communalist outlook. In contrast, a Mixed Member Majoritarian (MMM) system that combines FPTP and CLPR may be able to reduce the three problems above without necessarily producing more parties than FPTP currently does.