Electoral Process Across Culture

Linkage institutions can be defined as institutions that connect citizens with the government. Examples of linkage institutions include elections, political parties, interest groups, and the media. Elections specifically are supposed to encourage public participation in the selection of governmental officials. Unfortunately, low voter turnout has proved that elections are an imperfect linkage institution. Elections depend on voters to be successful, and some factors that relate to the likelihood of voting include age, education, and race. Although some people underestimate the power of the vote, voter turnout is

There is a number of systems that use PR such as the Single Transferable Vote (STV) (the Regional and National Lists) and the Alternative Vote. There is a third system that combines these two, known as the Additional Member System (AMS) or the hybrid or top-up system. The AMS system is presently used in elections for the Scottish Parliament, where voters can vote for single candidates in their constituencies but also for candidates from regional 'lists' put forward by each party. If there is a discrepancy between the percentage of seats the party has won and the percentage of votes cast, the seats are 'topped up' from the

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

The most important issue in relation to the Canadian electoral process is the debate over whether or not the state should implement electoral reform for federal elections. It is my stance that replacing the Single Member Plurality system (SMP) with the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) is undeniably in the best interest of Canadians, and I will attempt to prove this by contrasting The Limits: Electoral Systems and Electoral Reform - Or How I Came to Love SMP by Christopher Kam, who believes in the current SMP system, and Getting What You Vote For by John Hiemstra, who pushes for a change in favour of the MMP system. This paper will conclude with further critical analysis, as well as my justified stance the MMP system is clearly superior.

Over the years, political scientists have expressed their disapproval of American elections. They have openly stated that presidential elections do not matter. The reason being, is that they believe the outcome of elections is a result of forces outside of the campaigner’s influence. For example, the state of the economy, partisan loyalties, and normative, communicative, and symbolic roles are all disconnected from the influence of the campaigner. The latter mentioned aspects (anthropological), according to political scientists, receive little attention from scholars, but their impacts are very substantial. They restore confidence in governing institutions, result in an upsurge in mutual feelings, and give the citizenry hope of a better governing body after elections

Your voice, your vote! You can’t complain if you don’t vote! Undoubtedly, you have heard refrains like those many times over the course of this contentious election year. There is a reason for the focus on voter turnout you’ve been hearing. The electorate shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for facilitating progress in our country by fulfilling this crucial civic duty. Voters help elect a variety of representatives who reflect the views of Americans on pressing issues of the time. These officials’ influence on public policy cannot be overstated. For example, the election of progressive president Woodrow Wilson was significant in the advancement of the women’s suffrage. It was under his presidency women were given the right to vote.

The United States is often seen as a hallmark of democracy, due to the nature of peaceful presidential transitions along with the abundance of civil rights and liberties as outlined in the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. However, on an average, only 60% of eligible voters participate in the presidential elections that take place every four years, and 40% turn out for the congressional midterm elections that occur every two years (Fair Vote). John Winthrop, a New England colonist during the early 17th century, told his fellow Puritans, “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us” (Ushistory.org), but has this really lived out its meaning if American elections do not include the voices of everyone?

Every presidential election in the United States is different, but what makes this election stand out more than others? The candidates, obviously. But more importantly, it’s the economic and cultural issues that intensify this 2016 election.

Canada’s electoral system has come under scrutiny by citizens who believe it is not a fair representation of a modern democracy. The idea of reformation has been an issue in Canada through out it’s history. Most recently, the idea of an electoral system reformation was a key political goal of the Liberal party in the 2015 election, but was later abandoned by the party, outraging many Liberal voters who saw the reformation as an issue for which they voted for (Liberal Party of Canada 2015). It has become clear that Canadians want change in the way they elect their government. The current Canadian electoral system is in dire need of reform to better represent voters, increase voter turnout, and discourage strategic voting. The Canadian government

There you are, standing in the booth looking at the screen and all the candidates to choose from. You have entered all your votes except for the most important one. Who will you pick to be the president of the United States? You have been thinking about this decision for months. Who do you want to vote for? That is the question that plagues Americans every election year. The problem is most people do not have a complete understanding of the issues our country is facing. As well, they do not understand the plans each candidate has to deal with these issues. Another issue we face is that one out of every 10 Americans does not care about politics at all. This begs the question, how can we elect a president when so many people in our country are

In her article Are there global norms and universal standards of electoral integrity and malpractice?, Pippa Norris determines just that - whether or not the public perceptions of the integrity of an election match up with the observer reports of the elections. To be entirely honest, she does not actual determine if there are truly global norms, for reasons I will discuss later - but essentially, her research question is not about global norms but rather the equity or lack thereof between the opinion of the general public and the experts’ data on the issue. She never quite states a hypothesis for her reasoning, but assuming that she believes there will be some sort of relationship between the two variables, her causal logic would be that people who live in their country have just as valid and correct an opinion of their country’s electoral system as any observer to that system and may even sometimes lend invaluable information to said observers. She uses the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights as the basis for her idea that there are global norms for electoral integrity, which would be her causal logic (since many, many nations have signed on to the agreement, one would

There seems to be a general consent among scholars and policy makers working in this field that constitutional structures do matter. Though, there is a disagreement on how constitutional structures, such as electoral rules or systems and forms of government, affect the quality of governance and economic performance in a democracy. The chapter showed that there were theoretical arguments pointing to different directions concerning the effect of electoral rules and form of government on economic growth. The verification for any of these theoretical arguments failed to progress, since each point of view retained plausibility and there were strong theoretical arguments justifying both sides of each view. Even though there was some empirical evidence

My knowledge of the political election process was very limited. I knew the two most popular candidates from each party ran for president. The most popular candidates, with the most television time, were the only politicians in the race, as far as I was concerned. Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. are the only Republican and Democratic candidates I remember in their race for the presidency. Choosing one candidate, from one party out of many, is what I was unaware of. Barack Obama winning office in 2008 was a historical moment though he and Hillary Clinton are the only democrats I can of. Only knowing of Mitt Romney, and another candidate’s name whom I cannot recall, I knew even less when it came to the republican party runners.

The election process in the United States is a valuable process to the election of the proper officials to satisfy the people. The people run the country which is why we live in freedom because we control what happens with major decisions by choosing whom we want to decide these decisions. The whole country goes to vote on a certain day and by the end of that day we will vote to select who will run the country, state, county, or city political positions. The most complex decision and one with the biggest impact are selecting who the President of the United States shall be. We examine what their views are and who would do a better job. Then vote in our respected states with a certain number of electoral votes

As one of Europe’s oldest democratic countries, the United Kingdom consequently has one of the oldest voting systems, a plurality system often called First-Past-The-Post. The system relies on a basic principle; voters can vote for only one candidate and the candidate who receives the most votes wins the seat. (UK Parliament Website, 2014) As the quotation from David Cameron shows, the system is often hailed as one of the simplest voting systems possible, and is mainly used in the U.K for national elections.