 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 3 4 ] Next Last |
An election is a process in which a vote is held to elect candidates to an office. It is the mechanism by which a democracy fills elective offices in the legislature, and sometimes the executive and judiciary, and in which electorates choose local government officials. Elections are held in many settings from students' unions to corporate officers. The study of elections is called psephology.
The most common election methods or electoral systems can be categorized as either proportional or majoritarian. Among the former are party-list proportional representation and additional member system. Among the latter are first-past-the-post (relative majority), and absolute majority. Many countries have growing electoral reform movements, which advocate systems such as approval voting, single transferable voteThe Single Transferable Vote or STV is a preference voting system designed to minimise wasted votes in multi-candidate elections while ensuring that votes are explicitly for individuals rather than party lists. When promoted as a proportional representati, instant runoff voting or a Condorcet methodCondorcet criterion Any election method conforming to the Condorcet criterion is known as a Condorcet method . The name comes from its deviser, the 18th century mathematician and philosopher Marquis de Condorcet, although the method was previously devised.
Electoral systems concern the obtention of a winner, or several winners, according to the tallying of the votes. Even before this point, a variety of vote counting systemsThere exist various methods through which the ballots cast at an election may be counted, prior to applying a voting system to obtain one or more winners. Manual counting In some jurisdictions, the ballots are counted manually, either by permanent or temp and ballotA ballot is a device used to record choices made by voters. Each voter uses one ballot, and ballots are not shared. In the simplest elections, a ballot may be a simple scrap of paper on which each voter writes in the name of a candidate, but governmental types are used, depending on the locale and election. Various systems have different strengths and weaknesses, and their applicability depends on the specifics of the election.
In theory in democracies the authority of the governmentA government is an organization that has the power to make and enforce laws for a certain territory. There are several definitions on what exactly constitutes a government. The government has been defined as the dominant decision-making arm (the policy el derives solely from the consent of the governed. The principal mechanism for translating that consent into governmental authority is the holding of free and fair elections.
Jeane KirkpatrickJeane Jordan Kirkpatrick (born November 19, 1926) is an American conservative political scientist and member of the neoconservative movement. After serving as Ronald Reagan's foreign policy adviser in his 1980 campaign, she was nominated as the U. ambassa, scholar and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has offered this definition: "Democratic elections are not merely symbolic....They are competitive, periodic, inclusive, definitive elections in which the chief decision-makers in a government are selected by citizens who enjoy broad freedom to criticize government, to publish their criticism and to present alternatives."The Democracy Watch (International) website, further defines fair democratic elections as, "Elections in which great care is taken to prevent any explicit or hidden structural bias towards any one candidate, aside from those beneficial biases that naturally result from an electorate that is equally well informed about the various assets and liabilities of each candidate".
Other scholars argue that elections are at most secondary to a functioning democracy. They argue that the rule of law is more important. An example would be pre-unification Hong Kong, which was ruled by a British administrator but was a free and open society due to the strong legal institutions.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|