Democracy Building: Elections
Voting Systems
There are basically two systems in parliamentary elections,
- the Majority Election System
- the Proportional Representation System.
Both systems do have advantages and shortcomings and there is no generally accepted preference. Two important points to be considered are equal and just influence of every vote on the electoral result and stability of the political system.
Majority Election System
With the majority election system, only one member of parliament is to be elected per constituency [area and group of voters living therein that is taken as a unit in the election process].
Basic Idea
The most qualified personality shall be selected to represent the constituency.
Characteristics, Pros and Cons
• With the majority election system, small parties have no chance to win a mandate unless there are some constituencies with a population having political views differing much from those in the rest of the country. With the size constituencies in big nations do have (some 100,000 voters) this is rather unlikely. Therefore the majority election system will inevitably lead to parties uniting or building blocks (tight alliances) until only two major players remain on the political scene. So voters are forced to select between the candidates of two big parties basically. While the this tends to create a stable parliamentary majority for the government it is not likely to represent a pluralistic modern society adequately.
• Supporters of a minority party might feel not being represented by the member of parliament rooted in their region because he or she represents the other party and other political concepts.
• In a big nation, one member of parliament is going to represent some 100,000 inhabitants. Evidently these people do not live in towns of exactly this size. To assign fairly equal numbers of inhabitants to every constituency, several villages and and small towns must be grouped to form a constiuency while large cities must be divided into several constituencies. There is no "natural", evident rule of assignment.
In the past years it has repeatedly been reported that minor changes in the definition of constituencies were deliberately planned by governments of several countries (U.K., France and others) to ensure that their party could win a few mandates in a situation where government and opposition party have almost the same strength.
The trick herein is the following: if there is a constituency with a solid majority for the government party, subtract a few towns voting overwhelmingly for the government and add them to a neighboring constituency where the government party just needs a few percents more of the votes to win the election and exchange these towns for a few towns known to be voting for the opposition - so the government's party will win both seats.
In principle, this kind of manipulation is just as much electoral fraud as counting some votes twice or having some votes uncounted. The problem is: the existing old borders of a constituency might have been created by the same kind of manipulation by a former government and it is almost impossible to find a really neutral solution.
•While the majority election system seems to be straightforward and simple at first glance, it leads to rather complex decisions that are not transparent to voters. This is definitely not a basis to create trust in democracy.
Democracy Building: ElectionsVoting SystemsThere are basically two systems in parliamentary elections, - the Majority Election System - the Proportional Representation System. Both systems do have advantages and shortcomings and there is no generally accepted preference. Two important points to be considered are equal and just influence of every vote on the electoral result and stability of the political system. Majority Election SystemWith the majority election system, only one member of parliament is to be elected per constituency [area and group of voters living therein that is taken as a unit in the election process]. Basic IdeaThe most qualified personality shall be selected to represent the constituency. Characteristics, Pros and Cons• With the majority election system, small parties have no chance to win a mandate unless there are some constituencies with a population having political views differing much from those in the rest of the country. With the size constituencies in big nations do have (some 100,000 voters) this is rather unlikely. Therefore the majority election system will inevitably lead to parties uniting or building blocks (tight alliances) until only two major players remain on the political scene. So voters are forced to select between the candidates of two big parties basically. While the this tends to create a stable parliamentary majority for the government it is not likely to represent a pluralistic modern society adequately. • Supporters of a minority party might feel not being represented by the member of parliament rooted in their region because he or she represents the other party and other political concepts. • In a big nation, one member of parliament is going to represent some 100,000 inhabitants. Evidently these people do not live in towns of exactly this size. To assign fairly equal numbers of inhabitants to every constituency, several villages and and small towns must be grouped to form a constiuency while large cities must be divided into several constituencies. There is no "natural", evident rule of assignment. In the past years it has repeatedly been reported that minor changes in the definition of constituencies were deliberately planned by governments of several countries (U.K., France and others) to ensure that their party could win a few mandates in a situation where government and opposition party have almost the same strength. The trick herein is the following: if there is a constituency with a solid majority for the government party, subtract a few towns voting overwhelmingly for the government and add them to a neighboring constituency where the government party just needs a few percents more of the votes to win the election and exchange these towns for a few towns known to be voting for the opposition - so the government's party will win both seats. In principle, this kind of manipulation is just as much electoral fraud as counting some votes twice or having some votes uncounted. The problem is: the existing old borders of a constituency might have been created by the same kind of manipulation by a former government and it is almost impossible to find a really neutral solution. •While the majority election system seems to be straightforward and simple at first glance, it leads to rather complex decisions that are not transparent to voters. This is definitely not a basis to create trust in democracy.
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