POLI 100 Lecture Notes - Party System, Liberal Democracy, One-Party State
Document Summary
Voting is a mechanism for making collective decisions. In democratic states, it is a means for ensuring that majority preferences are reflected in electoral outcomes. In practice, it is difficult to ascertain objective majorities especially when there are three or more candidates or policy options. As a result, a range or electoral systems are currently in use and the choice of system can have a dramatic effect on the election. How you count the vote has a huge influence on what the results are. Impossible to determine the most preferred candidate, given 3 or more choices unless one gets more than 50% of the preferential vote. Used by many states, including the us and the uk (for parliamentary and some other elections) It has the merit of simplicity the candidate with the most votes is the winner. Due to exaggeration of majority, it can allow for decisive action on the part of the.