Voting
Voting is a method for a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, to make a collective decision or express an opinion, usually following discussions, debates, or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high office by voting. Residents of a place represented by an elected official are called "constituents", and those constituents who cast a ballot for their chosen candidate are called "voters". There are different systems for collecting votes, with the most common being plurality voting and proportional representation.
Types of Voting[edit | edit source]
Voting can occur in a variety of forms. The most common types include:
- Plurality voting: This is the most common form of voting in the United States. In this system, the candidate with the most votes wins, even if they do not receive a majority of the votes.
- Proportional representation: This system is designed to ensure that the proportion of seats a party has in the legislature matches the proportion of votes it received in the election.
- Ranked voting: In this system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates, based on the second preferences of the eliminated candidate's voters. This process continues until a candidate has a majority of votes.
Voting Systems[edit | edit source]
Different voting systems use different types of votes. Plurality voting does not require the winner to achieve a majority, or more than fifty percent of the total votes cast. In a voting system that uses a single vote per race, when more than two candidates run, the winner may commonly have less than fifty percent of the vote.
Voting Methods[edit | edit source]
There are many variations in electoral systems, but the most common systems are:
- First-past-the-post voting: This is a plurality voting method. FPTP is a common, but not universal, feature of electoral systems with single-member electoral divisions.
- Two-round system: This is a voting method used to elect a single winner, where the voter casts a single vote for their chosen candidate.
See Also[edit | edit source]
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