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Dimensions of Electoral Systems | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There are five factors to consider when exploring electoral systems in various countries: 1) electoral formula 2) district magnitude 3) supplementary seats 4) electoral thresholds 5) ballot structure
Electoral Formula Electoral formula and district magnitude are general explored together. District magnitude addresses the number of representatives from any particular district and electoral formula determines how the representative(s) is/are selected. There are a number of electoral formulas from which one may choose. When coupled with district magnitude, the number of possibilities increases.
1) Plurality System In plurality systems there are many districts and each district elects only one candidate and the only requirement is that that candidate gets more votes than anyone else. Let's look at the effect of this electoral formula (plurality) on: 1) the outcome of the election; and 2) on voting
The results of the 1983, 1987, and 2001 elections in Britain are shown below. Over time, Britain has developed a strong Conservative party and a strong Labour party. At various times in British political history a Liberal party has attracted a significant following. In the 1970s a disaffected group of Labour party members broke off and created the Social Democratic Party. To further their chances of capturing seats the Liberal and Social Democratic parties created "the Alliance". The two parties agreed to run only one candidate in any election district to increase their chances of success. Look at what happened! Voter Support and Parliamentary Seats in 1983
General Election to the British House of Commons
Voter Support and Parliamentary Seats in 1987
General Election to the British House of Commons
Although the Alliance got about 25% of the votes in two consecutive elections, they got only about 3.5% of the seats! By the time 2001 rolls around, there is no Alliance, although there now is a Liberal Democratic Party getting about 18% of the votes and 8% of the seats. Other parties, generally reflecting regional/ethnic concerns win in seats in their respective regions, and get 9.4% of the votes and yet only get 4.5% of the seats. Who benefits? Voter Support and Parliamentary Seats in 2001
General Election to the British House of Commons
Many argue that the percentage of Alliance/ Liberal Democratic votes may actually be even be higher! Yet if you are a supporter and live in an election district where your party doesn't have a chance, what do you do? Many argue that the notion of anticipatory effects reduces the
percentage of votes cast for 3rd parties!! Alliance/LD voters may not have wanted to "waste" their vote in constituencies where they didn't have a chance and where, if they did, they'd help elect the candidate they'd least like to see get elected. This
is generally considered to be a problem for all similar systems. For
example, what do Green Party, Libertarian Party, etc. voters do in the
US?
2) Majority Systems Majority formulas require an absolute majority of votes cast (50% + 1) to identify a victor in an election. a) Majority As the number of candidates increases beyond 2 this result becomes increasingly unlikely. One way to fulfill the majority requirement in this circumstance is to have a second ballot runoff election between the top two votegetters. Louisiana
2002 Senate race 2002 French
presidential election
b) Majority Plurality A
majority-plurality system requires an absolute majority for victory on a
first ballot.
If no victor emerges then minor candidates are eliminated (in
French parliamentary elections candidates not receiving at least 12.5% of
the vote are eliminated from the second ballot.
The victor on the second ballot is the candidate with a plurality
of the votes cast.
c) Alternative The
alternative vote is used in Australia.
Voters are asked to indicate their 1st, 2nd,
3rd, etc. preference for candidates.
If a candidate receives an absolute majority of 1st
preferences, he or she is elected.
If there is no such candidate, the candidate with the lowest number
of first preferences is dropped and the ballots with this candidate listed
as the first preference are transferred to the second preferences.
This procedure is repeated by excluding the candidate with the
least preferences and redistributing the preferences until a majority
winner emerges.
3) Semi-proportional via s-nt-v The
single non-transferable vote allows the voter to cast one vote for one
candidate in a multimember district.
The candidates with the most votes win.
This system is often considered to be semi-proportional as it does
not guarantee that the distribution of seats reflects the percentage of
votes cast (one candidate in a 5 member district can get 80% of the vote
but represents only 20% of the representatives).
4) Proportional Systems: a) List proportional: A relatively simple system where a party receives parliamentary seats in proportion to its share of the total vote. If a parliament has, for example 100 seats and one party gets 25% of the votes, it gets 25 seats. The nation is thus considered to be one electoral district. The party determines the "party list", ie., the order in which candidates will get seats in Parliament. In theory, every party would have a list of 100 possible members of parliament in case they got every vote. Obviously, the higher up the list you are, the more likely you are to be a member of parliament. Lets look at The Netherlands under the microscope.
B) Single transferable vote The
single-transferable vote is often considered the most complicated but also
the most reflective electoral formula.
In this system voters rank-order individual candidates rather than
party lists in multimember district elections.
Vote transfers similar to those in the alternative vote method
occur but from both the top down
(from candidates who reach the vote threshold to assure a seat) and
from the bottom up (as is done in the alternative vote method).
These steps are repeated until
all seats are filled.
District Magnitude This denotes the number of candidates to be elected from a particular electoral district and ranges from one (the single-member district of legislatures in the US) to treating the country as one large multimember district (Israel).
Assume 100 voters in a district with the following results: Candidate of party A= 20 Candidate of party B= 10 Candidate of party C= 30 Candidate of party D= 20 Candidate of party E= 20 In a single-member plurality system of elections, Candidate C is the sole representative elected from the district thus the percentage of people not represented is 70% (100% who voted minus the 30% whose candidate was elected)
In a multimember district with 5 representatives elected from the district: Party A = 1 representative Party B = 0 representative Party C = 2 representatives Party D = 1 representatives Party E = 1 representatives In this system, only those who supported Party B did not get represented, thus 10% are not represented
In a multimember district with 10 representatives elected from the district: Party A = 2 representatives Party B = 1 representative Party C = 3 representatives Party D = 2 representatives Party E = 2 representatives All voters are represented and in proportion to their strength in the electorate.
Supplementary Seats In order to correct some of the deviations from proportionality that may occur in proportional systems of representation with small district magnitudes, a number of seats may allocated to underrepresented parties.
Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden
Electoral Thresholds Nation-wide districts and supplementary seats maximize proportionality and facilitate the representation of very small parties. In order not to make it easy for very small (or frivolous) parties to get represented, all countries with nation-wide districts and supplementary seats have minimum thresholds that parties must attain before they can be represented. It can be small (.67% in the Netherlands and 1% in Israel or relatively large (4% in Sweden and 5% in Germany).
Ballot Structure Ballots may be categorical or ordinal. Categorical ballots require that a voter give his mandate to a single party (either one candidate or one party's list of candidates)
In both Example A and Example B you are only choosing one category of representative(s) to represent you!
Ordinal ballots allow a voter to distribute his mandate to more than one candidate or party
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