PSCI260 Study Guide - Final Guide: Judicial Independence, Liberal Democracy, Report On The Affairs Of British North America
2 Feb 2014
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Document Summary
Electoral systems: our electoral systems are a success to the degree that they meet this goal and a failure to the degree that they do not. The detailed constitutional arrangements and voting systems which convert the vote into a determination of which individuals and political parties are elected to positions of power. Size matters to assure rep by pop, eg. , 308 seats and roughly 100,000 people per electoral district. Strengths- simple: easy to understand and stable: tends to produce strong majority governments. Invites gerrymandering (when govt in power redraws the borders of the constituency). Regionalism and sectionalism, both in voting and in party behaviour. Strategic voting (vote based on your own agenda). Wasted votes (vote for the party you know will lose). it is disproportional since a party can win less than 50 percent of votes yet still win all seats. Single member majority: the run-off (australia and france) used at party conventions to assure a level of party unity.
