polsic

POLSCI 202

UMASS Boston

Prof. Shuai Jin

Electoral Systems

What is the electoral system?

The rules that translate citizens’ votes into legislative seats and/or control of a directly elected executive.

· Plurality

· Majority

· Proportional Representation

· Mixed system

Plurality Rule

· First past the post system (FPTP)

· Single-member districts

· Vote for candidates

· Plurality formula: The candidate who receives the largest share of the votes in the electoral district wins the seat, even if that share is less than a majority of 50 percent +1 of the votes

· Geographical representation

· Winner-take-all

· Favors big parties, punishes small parties except when small parties concentrate in confined geographic regions

· Favors majority control of the legislature and effective government

Majority Rule

· Requires that candidates obtain an actual majority of 50 percent +1 of the votes in an electoral district to win

· Single-member districts

· Vote for candidates

· Instant-runoff voting (Australia): If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round, the second preferences of the lowest-ranked candidate are then added to the totals.

· Two-round system (France): a second round of elections that pit the top two candidates from the first round against each other.

· Rewards larger parties, penalizes smaller parties

Districts

· Single – member district

· Each district elects ONE legislator.

· Multi – member district

· District constituencies have more than one representative.

Proportional Representation

· Distributes seats proportionally to the vote each party receives

· Fewer districts but multi-member districts

· Different formulas are used to achieve the proportionality

· Thresholds: the minimum percentage of votes a party must obtain to win seats

· Party representation

Varieties of PR System

· Party list system

· Voters vote for parties, not individual candidates. Parties control the list of candidates.

· Parties rank the candidates on the list. The higher up on a list a party member is, the more likely that member is to get a seat.

· Albania, Argentina, Turkey, Israel

· Open-list PR

· Voters choose a candidate but votes are aggregated by political party to determine the allocation of seats across parties.

· Brazil, Finland, the Netherlands

· Disperse political power, does not discriminate smaller parties

Mixed System

· An effort to combine the other two systems

· Use a plurality or majority rule to elect some members of the national legislature

· Use a PR electoral rule to elect the remainder

· Voters have two votes also have the option to split their votes (vote for a candidate from a big party under plurality rule, but vote for a small party under PR)

· Combine geographical and party representation

· Balancing effective gov. and limited gov.

· Results tend to resemble elections under PR

Why does electoral system matter?

· Elections are central to the functioning of democratic systems.

· The design of electoral systems is a crucial choice in building democracy.

· The electoral system has important effects on the party system and real world of politics.