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Voting Operations
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Overview
Aims
As voting is generally a geographically dispersed activity which often has to be organised and implemented within very tight time frames, providing a cost-effective voting service for all eligible voters whilst maintaining high standards of integrity, security and professionalism is a major challenge to electoral management bodies.
Organising and operating facilities that will provide an opportunity for all eligible persons to participate, through voting, in the choice of their representatives in their institutions of governance is the most publicly visible activity and the prime focus of electoral management.
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It does attempt to identify those good or essential practices for maintaining voting operations integrity that can be translated into any environment.
Key Issues
In any electoral environment there are similar key issues for which effective solutions have to be found, if voting operations are to promote public confidence in the integrity and professionalism of electoral management, and acceptance of election results. Significant amongst these are:
What are the most suitable Voting Arrangements? What range and mix of facilities for voting--from voting at the local voting station through special provisions for voting in a particular manner, for example, by mail, absentee, before general election day or, in particular locations, in remote areas or institutions--provides all eligible voters the opportunity to vote in a cost-effective manner?
What are the Administrative Considerations that, along with legal frameworks, provide the basis for an electoral management body 's Planning of voting operations? As a highly complex combination of processes, voting operations require careful planning and trials of proposed solutions before implementation.
What are the appropriate types, designs, and quantities of election Materials and Equipment? Voting is a massive information transfer exercise, which demands effective materials and equipment
Getting to polling locations can be a hassle, especially for the disabled, the sick, and people without transportation. In addition, voting becomes even more difficult for
Voting in many countries is held in different ways. In The United States of America, voting is voluntary while the Australian citizen has to vote, it is compulsory. When an Australian citizen does not vote they receive a fine. Compulsory voting has now become a large political issue for many countries. Great Britain has seen a dramatic decline in the number of people voting in the last 15 years (Singh, 2014) and compulsory voting has become a large political and social debate. However, as with any political change, there are strengths and weaknesses. The Australian system is an excellent one to analyse as the question has to be asked when introducing compulsory voting what are the long term democratic, economic and social issues? Four key points can be outlined to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the Australian compulsory voting system. The first, compulsory voting provides a clear and accurate representation of an entire electorate. Additionally, this system may influence an increase in support for the leftist policy in a current democratic institution. Another key issue to consider is, does an active and informed citizen have a moral duty and obligation to vote to protect and further society? Key constitutional changes brought about by referendums can prove that compulsory voting is essential and needed in society for every vote to count. Lastly, compulsory voting when being a secret ballot can turn into a more compulsory “turn up” for many citizens as they can
In this essay I will assess the outcomes of Additional Member system, First Past the Post system and the Closed Party List system. The F-P-T-P system is used to elect the members of House of Commons and local government in England and Wales. Voters select candidates, and do so by marking his or her name with an ‘X’ on the ballot paper. This reflects the principle of ‘one person, one vote’. The Additional Members system is used in Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly, and Northern Ireland Assembly and Greater London assembly. It is a mixed system made up of F-P-T-P and party-list elements. The Regional party list (or the closed party list) is used to elect the
As technology has evolved there have become more ways to cast a vote than ever before. Most people are familiar with the traditional way of
Rhetorical Analysis: The primary audience for this paper includes every citizen aged eighteen and above eligible to vote in the United States. The proposed topic mostly concerns these individuals due to the fact, they are affected by presidential voting institutions. Throughout this paper, I will be arguing in favor of the Electoral College, with an end goal of persuading my audience of the benefits of the system.
It is difficult to completely understand and in a way appreciate what the Electoral College is if you don’t understand it. Therefore, this paper will go in depth as to how the voting process works in the United States, with a main focus on the Electoral College. I will start by talking about the background, what challenges and problems it was trying to solve, how it came to be and who came up with such idea. Secondly, I would talk about the advantages the Electoral College possesses, such as it keeps small states as viable participants, it maintains division of power and how it’s beneficial to the candidates and their campaign. But as with everything, there are also some disadvantages that come with such, example, ignoring the will of the
Now that this series of articles has begun, this detail focused article will look at the matter of Maine’s Ranked Choice Voting Initiative. On the November 2016 ballot, the citizens of Maine will be voting on an initiative on whether to establish ranked choice voting for statewide offices and federal representation. This issue involves matters of how to best establishing systems of voting to reflect the voter’s will, to give a fair enabling of candidate options, and to produce electoral results which are constructive and produce broadly acceptable winners. To see what implications this issue may have for these matters, it will be looked at.
process. However, voting in the 21st century is not as important to people as it was in the past.
Early voting bore the intention of increasing access to the ballot, reducing the long lines on Election Day and overall, improving the experience. It is imperative; in turn that
This article presents the impression of a national "vote by mail" can do upon the political map of the United States and significant analyses why there implies such considerable objection to this technique for casting votes. Subjects covered are a summary of the "vote by mail" operation in two states, Colorado and Oregon.
Northern California now needs a electoral system because the state which once California is now Northern and Southern California. Setting up an electoral system means more than just determining how the people should be elected into positions within the government, it has to do with a broader scope. The way that the electoral system is set up encompasses the way that it deals with representation, and we learned through lecture that this term representation had to do with “how a person acts on behalf of another person or a group of people”. So in this scenario of setting up the system that voters are going to elect politicians to represent their values and problems, it is very important that the right system be used. To create this system we must answer 4 key elements of how the electoral system will be ran such as what type of representation the state will have, the voting method that will be used, and what we discuss first which is the number of member’s that we have per district.
The U.S Constitution gives the states considerable latitude in the way of conducting elections. The American citizens have many opportunities to vote. However, a turnout in American elections has dramatically decreased over the past several decades. In order to address this issue, majority of states have allowed absentee voting reforms. These convenient reforms are thought to increase the voter turnout in the elections, as well as to reduce administrative costs.
In this essay, I would like to discuss the major obstacles to voting, recent changes to overcome voting barriers and the political influence of changed rules. Low turnout in the U.S. reflects that there are obstacles for people to voting and changes to overcome these obstacles may also bring new problems to different social groups. I will elaborate on these aspects in the following parts.
In the US each municipality selects their own voting equipment regardless of what other places are doing. According to this CPSR article the Vote-O-Matic system has been in place for over ten years in
A voting system has four characteristics: accuracy, anonymity, scalability, and speed. Current electronic voting machines claim to