"An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined."
Elections and electoral systems examine the methods and processes used to choose political representatives and allocate power in different countries.
Types of Electoral Systems: Understanding the different electoral systems used across the world, such as proportional representation, first-past-the-post and ranked voting.
Voter Behavior: Understanding the attitudes and actions of voters, including voter turnout, political socialization, and voter suppression.
Political parties: The role of political parties in the electoral system, including their affiliations, ideologies, and the impact of third-party candidates in elections.
Campaigning and Media: The role of media and campaigning in elections, including campaign finance laws, the use of social media in campaigning, and the impact of negative campaigning.
Election Administration: The role of electoral bodies, including election laws and regulations, the electoral process, voter registration and verification, and vote counting.
Electoral observation and monitoring: The role of international and local organizations in observing and monitoring electoral processes, including electoral integrity and transparency.
Electoral Integrity and Electoral Malpractice: The range of issues that can affect the fairness and credibility of national and local electoral systems, including electoral malpractice, gerrymandering, and voter fraud.
Voter Participation: Understanding who is eligible to vote, the nature of the voting systems, barriers to voting that limit voter participation, and the impacts of voter apathy.
Electoral Results and Outcomes: The fundamental influence of electoral outcomes and results, including the formation of governments, political accountability of elected officials, and the consequences of disputed election results.
Comparative Electoral Analysis: A comparison of electoral systems used in various countries, including the pros and cons, trends over time, and the differences between various democracies.
Electoral Laws: Understanding election rules and regulations, such as qualifications for candidacy, campaign finance laws, and the design of the ballot.
Electoral Geography: Understanding the role of geography and nationalism in shaping electoral outcomes, and the impact of redistricting on electoral outcomes.
Electoral Systems Reforms: Reviewing electoral reform movements and their goals, such as changes in voting systems, campaign finance laws or the design of electoral institutions.
Election Incidents: Understanding the events that occur during elections, including violence, hacking and vote counting irregularities.
Election Outlets: Understanding the distribution of news outlets and media across countries and the role they play in the electoral system.
Plurality/Majority System: Also known as the first-past-the-post system, this is the most common electoral system where the candidate with the highest number of votes wins.
Proportional Representation System: This system seeks to distribute seats to parties in proportion to the number of votes they receive. There are different types of proportional representation such as the closed-list, open-list, and mixed-member proportional representation.
Single Transferable Vote (STV) System: This system is used where multiple seats are being contested. It allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference.
Alternative Vote (AV) System: Also called Instant-Runoff Voting, this system allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. The candidate with the fewest votes is progressively eliminated in each round until one candidate has a majority.
Two-Round System: This system is used in many countries such as France and Russia to elect their respective presidents. In the first round, voters choose their preferred candidate, and if no candidate gets a majority, a second round is held between the two candidates with the highest votes.
Limited Vote System: This system allows voters to select only a limited number of candidates from a list of candidates.
Cumulative Vote System: This system allows voters to cast multiple votes for a single candidate.
Borda Count System: This system adds up the points given to each candidate based on a ranking system rather than just counting the number of first-place votes.
Range Voting System: This system allows voters to rate candidates on a scale of the score.
Citizens’ Assembly System: A group of individuals is randomly selected to make decisions on behalf of the entire population.
Referendum System: The electorate is asked to vote on a specific policy or issue.
Initiative System: This system allows citizens to propose laws or policies and vote on them.
Recall System: This system allows voters to remove elected officials from office before their term ends.
By-election System: This system is used to fill vacancies in a parliament or legislature.
"Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, non-profit organizations, and informal organizations."
"These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the result."
"Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws..."
"Political electoral systems... are typically conducted by election commissions..."
"Some electoral systems elect a single winner to a unique position, such as prime minister, president, or governor, while others elect multiple winners, such as members of parliament or boards of directors."
"Voters may vote directly for individual candidates or for a list of candidates put forward by a political party or alliance."
"...with the most common systems being first-past-the-post voting, block voting, the two-round (runoff) system, proportional representation, and ranked voting."
"Some electoral systems, such as mixed systems, attempt to combine the benefits of non-proportional and proportional systems."
"The study of formally defined electoral methods is called social choice theory or voting theory."
"...this study can take place within the field of political science, economics, or mathematics, and specifically within the subfields of game theory and mechanism design."
"Impossibility proofs such as Arrow's impossibility theorem demonstrate that when voters have three or more alternatives, no preferential voting system can guarantee the race between two candidates remains unaffected when an irrelevant candidate participates or drops out of the election."
"Some electoral systems elect a single winner to a unique position, while others elect multiple winners."
"...non-political elections may take place in business, non-profit organizations, and informal organizations."
"Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws."
"Electoral systems govern... who is allowed to vote."
"Political electoral systems are... conducted by election commissions."
"These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: ...how votes translate into the election outcome."
"These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: ...limits on campaign spending..."
"Some electoral systems, such as mixed systems, attempt to combine the benefits of non-proportional and proportional systems."