Electoral Systems Flashcards
Why care at all about elections?
They provide democratic legitimacy, reveal democratic preferences (of the constituency and help determine who gets to become our representatives), and provide accountability (between voters and representatives, representative takes responsibility for the “government”)
Non-proportional systems
“Winner takes all”: winner is not determined by the proportion of votes they receive, they take all of the seats.
Non-proportional systems better address the problem of accountability—you will have one representative who you can form a connection with in your district.
The winner can win on two possibilities:
Plurality Rule (FPTP/SMP)
The candidate who wins the election is determined by whether or not they have the most votes!
“First Past the Post” = the person who crosses the line first
Single Member Plurality (SMP) = it is only A SINGLE MEMBER that fills all of the seats per district—one representative who achieves a plurality of the votes (but does not have to be a majority of the votes)
Majority Rule
In order to win you need a majority of the votes, not just more than what the other competitor got.
You can win 100% of the seat with only 50% of the vote, and the vote is not split into percentages, there is only one seat to win
Run-off elections
Occurs under a majority rule winning possibility: if no nobody wins a majority, run-offs are held until a majority outcomes occurs. Thus puts a burden on the voters because they have to arrive at the ballots more than once.
Preferential Voting (IRV/AV)
Also under a majority rule system, where voters have to give a ranking of the candidates (a different burden on the voters). The votes are reallocated after knocking out the weaker candidates to find out who the majority winner is.
IRV = instant run-off voting
AV = alternative voting
THESE BOTH MEAN THE SAME THING
Proportional systems
The idea that you allocate seats in a district according to the proportion of votes won by a party, results in multi-member districts and purest proportionality. These systems are more representative of the vote than non-proportional systems.
Proportional systems are better for representation, since everyone’s vote is counted in the allocation of seats.
These systems also allow for party fragmentation, it rewards smaller parties and encourages more and more niche politics (more voices can be represented)
Single Transferable Vote (STV)
A ranking system where every elector has one vote to cast but indicates their ranking on how it could be allocated (could be transferred across candidates according to the ranking)
Party List
The party provides a ranking of people who they want higher/more than others—for voters who are not concerned with which people sits in which seats
SMP systems
SMP systems rewards bigger parties, so you have to be big in order to be successful
These bigger parties have more moderate ideas, so there is less coalition politics.
Means that there is more strategic voting.
This system, working alongside the FPTP plurality rule, benefits small parties that are regionally concentrated: so smaller parties are incentivized to make highly regionalized appeals.
Strategic Voting
You vote for someone who is not your most preferred candidate—within an SMP system, it incentivizes under certain conditions voting not for your first preference.
This is because if you are in a district where your most preferred candidate is weak and your least preferred candidate is strong, then you have every incentive to vote for your second-most preferred candidate, who you don’t really want but is stronger than your first.
Mixed Member Proportional (MMP)
A hybrid system where some seats are non-proportional seats and some seats are proportional seats—can work where one chamber is proportional and another chamber is non-proportional (ex. Australia)
Duverger’s “Law”
How to calculate the number of effective parties (parties that actually win) against the number of parties that simply exist.
Predicts that under the SMP (single member plurality) system, you are more likely to get bipartism (dominated by two big parties), and under PR (proportional representation) system, you are more likely to get multipartism.
Canada doesn’t follow Duverger’s Law since it has too many parties for a single member plurality system.
