Proportional representation is characterized by governments comprised of multi-party legislatures – a healthy variety in selection for electors makes “voting a more meaningful, political act” (Amy, p. 24) and encourages “good”, active political participation. Proportional representation promotes fierce competition within the political arena – whether the party is a newly-formalized grass-roots movement or an established entity, each must aggressively campaign to draw in voters with a platform to maximize support within their original guidelines. Essentially, to maintain power, a party must cater to the desire of the people, which often leads to the resulting government being most reflective of the rational, “median-voter”, and generally …show more content…
293) – an important aspect of “good” political participation. Political efficacy, in the context of this essay, is defined as “the idea that individuals can have an impact on political decisions and that government is responsive to what people want” (Mintz, Close and Croci, p.453). Representative government’s greatest advantage over majoritarian systems is that party representation in government directly reflects the proportion of votes it receives from the electorate. Voting is incentivized because the impact of each ballot is greater along with the potential for an elector to change government to reflect their interests. According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s website, proportionally representative Sweden had a turnout of 85.51% during their 2014 election, and the trends of the 17 preceding elections indicate the turnout rates continue to remain over 80%. Voter turnout continues to remain strong in a proportionally represented society, even among the electorate that voted contrary to the majority, because of the reported satisfaction with the electoral process (Lijphart, p. 286). Therefore, it is not the results of an election which impacts an elector’s likelihood to vote as much as it is the feeling of political efficacy associated with the electoral process. Individuals capable of voting are more likely …show more content…
Electoral systems based on a representational model decrease the number of, as an electorate perceives, “wasted votes”. (Karp and Banducci, p.4) The increased potential for non-geographically concentrated minority groups to achieve representation within government incentivizes voting tremendously – the system is generally viewed as a more “fair” process (Karp and Banducci, p.4). Active minority participation is an important aspect of achieving “good” political participation, but is often undermined in majoritarian systems (Lijphart, p. 273). A large diversity in electorate turnout indicates both high political equality which, in the context of the source, means the degree to which all votes are considered to be equal (Lijphart, p. 284) and that government reflects the diversity in views within a nation-state. Candidates, in plurality elections, need only cater to the majority of the constituency they seek to represent and minority “voices are muted or, in some cases, shut out entirely” (LeDuc 2005), resulting in a system which lowers the value of minority ballots and decreases “political equality”. The aforementioned tendency to suppress or ignore minority opinions often results in notoriously high distortions between actual ballots, and the seats (influence) parties are awarded. This is best demonstrated by the results of
A proportionate electoral system (otherwise known as proportional representation or PR) grants its voters a voice in their vote. The way that the PR system works is that for every percentage of votes a party receives, they will be granted around the same percentage of seats in parliament. For example, if a party receives 35% of the votes, they would receive 35% of the seats in legislature. This is important for Canada because it gives smaller parties a better chance of retaining a seat. There are many different varieties of PR, due to the fact that at often times, the voting percentages do not evenly translate into the number of seats available (King, 2000). For instance, if a party receive 33.6% of the vote, they can’ receive 33.6% of seats. Because of this, numerous variations of the PR system have been created. The most common...
Every individual can stand for a race, gender, income, education, age, or a combination of countless categories. Another criticism of Pomper is the complication of “critical elections” and “temporary peculiarities.” Pomper defines a critical election as “not usually part of (these) stable periods, but serve as breaking points, ending one era and leading to the next” (Pomper 547). A “temporary peculiarity” marks surprising changes in party electorate, but does not mark the end of one era and the beginning of another. This makes elections hard to accurately classify until after the long-term effects have been realized.
In this essay I will argue that British General Elections should be conducted using a system of Proportional Representation. First, I will argue that the system would be more democratic as every vote that is cast would be represented and this ...
"Miller light and bud light…either way you end up with a mighty weak beer!" This is how Jim Hightower (a Texan populist speaker) described the choices that the U.S. electorate had in the 2000 elections. This insinuates that there is a clear lack of distinction between the parties. Along with numerous others, this is one of the reasons why the turnout is so low in the U.S. elections. In trying to explain the low figures at the U.S. elections, analysts have called American voters apathetic to indifferent to downright lazy. I disagree that the 50% (in recent elections) of voters that fail to turnout to vote are lazy and that they have just reason not too. I will also show that the problem lies within the system itself in that the institutional arrangements, electoral and governmental, do not create an environment that is conducive to mass participation. I will address these main issues and several others that have an effect on voter participation. In doing so I will compare America to other established democracies.
Loewen, P. J., Milner, H., & Hicks, B. M. (1997). Does Compulsory Voting Lead To More Informed and Engaged Citizens? An Experimental Test. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 41(3), 655-672. Retrieved from http://journals1.scholarsportal.info.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/tmp/44514596344978336.pdf
Among the many ways Americans can participate in politics, voting is considered one of the most common and important ways for Americans to get involved. The outcome of any election, especially at the national level, determines who will be making and enforcing the laws that all Americans must abide by. With this in mind one might assume that all Americans are active voters, but studies show the voter turnout is actually astonishingly low. With this unsettling trend it is important to know what statistics say about voter turnout as was as the four major factors that influence participation: Socioeconomic status, education, political environment, and state electoral laws, in order to help boost turnout in future elections.
The issue of electoral reform has become more important than ever in Canada in recent years as the general public has come to realize that our current first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system, formally known as single-member plurality (SMP) has produced majority governments of questionable legitimacy. Of the major democracies in the world, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom are the only countries that still have SMP systems in place. Interestingly enough, there has been enormous political tension and division in the last few years in these countries, culminating with the election results in Canada and the USA this year that polarized both countries. In the last year we have seen unprecedented progress towards electoral reform, with PEI establishing an electoral reform commissioner and New Brunswick appointing a nine-member Commission on Legislative Democracy in December 2003 to the groundbreaking decision by the British Columbia Citizen’s Assembly on October 24, 2004 that the province will have a referendum on May 17, 2005 to decide whether or not they will switch to a system of proportional representation. This kind of reform is only expected to continue, as Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty decided to take BC’s lead and form an independent Citizen’s Assembly with the power to determine whether or not Ontario will have a referendum regarding a change to a more proportional system. There is still much work to do however, and we will examine the inherent problems with Canada’s first-past-the-post system and why we should move into the 21st century and switch to a form of proportional representation.
Proportional representation is almost always acknowledged as the fairest electoral system. With this in mind, many still reject a mixed member proportional system. Critics argue that the current method has produced a stable and effective government, while MMP would create an ineffective government. Wiseman feels that since Canada has been consistently stable, our electoral system does not need to be changed. Hiemstra and Jansen disagree with the plurality system that is currently in place for it does not produce fair representation and devalues citizen’s votes. Canadians must make a choice between the value of effectiveness and the values of justice and equity. Although a switch is not anticipated in the near future, Canadian citizens can hope that it is at least in the minds of many voters and on the discussion list of the government.
In conclusion, it can clearly be seen that, because of the inequality to vote, gender, religious and race exclusions were pronounced side effects. Gender exclusions were shown through the inequality to vote due to the views of women in society. Religious exclusions were expressed through the uneven opportunities to vote through the prejudice set against the religions. And, racial exclusions were shown through the lack of the ability to vote be the intentional discrimination that these races were victims of. While others may say that these exclusions of groups can be seen through other actions, voting inequalities straightforwardly shows this. This is because when only specific groups can vote, it can be seen that the other groups are unfairly treated to their franchise.
The authors describe some of the advantages of a MMP system: “Mixed electoral systems provide fairly proportional outcomes, maintain the geographic link between constituents and members, provide for greater choice, and allow the opportunity for smaller parties to represented in Parliament” (p. 11). This system works better than the current FPTP or plurality system, because it allows citizen’s a second opportunity to have a voice. This is important because it would allow our minority groups to have a greater political influence. As mentioned earlier, in the current system all votes for candidates who lost, were insignificant to the election outcome. The authors explain: “Only those votes that go to the eventual winner count towards electing a representative, which may discourage people from voting or promote disaffection with the system” (p. 3). Alternatively, the MMP system allows citizen’s a second opportunity to elect party members in order to proportionally represent the popular
Schwartz & Rettie (2003) discuss that this system eliminates the ability of voters to seek help from a particular political who had represented them personally. Johnston (2001) states that this type of voting produces a coalition government which means that voters aren’t aware of who is accountable for making the government politices. They vote for the party they want to win but are unaware or who from that party is going to be represented (Johnston, 2001). This can result in the public not agreeing with who is representing the party and there isn't much they can do about it. Some will say that proportional representation produces a stable government, Pepall (n.d) has something different to say about this. Pepall (n.d), discusses that failure of elections under this type of electoral system states that failure to produce decisions often leads to unstable governments and the power can be shifted from the elected representative to state officials. Having state officials making the decisions instead of the elected representative means that the one making decisions wasn't elected by the public (Pepall, n.d). This isn’t the type of outcome that the public expected, what elections should be is whoever wins the majority of the votes
Britain is considering changing current first past the post voting system (FPTP) to proportional representation (PR). The main reason is that FPTP is “quasi-democratic” voting system under which there is only one majority party ruling the government and it does not represent wishes of all voters as some votes are wasted. Whereas, PR seems to be the best alternative voting system with proportionality of seats in mandatory places, more parties ruling government and etc. Let us look at these two voting systems and analyze whether PR is suitable and alternative change for FPTP and do advantages of PR outweigh disadvantages.
Voter turnout has been declining in the United States throughout history, due to the potential voters’ personal choice not to vote and ineligibility. According to research, a large percentage of individuals are not voting because political parties fail to appeal to the voters and this leads to the voting population losing interest in the campaign, while others postpone registering and by the time they realize their delay the election is upon them. This downward trend of voter turnout can be traced to the reforms of the Progressive era. Turnout in post-Progressive era America remained low, never reaching the levels attained before the Progressive era reforms. This would be expected, since there is little in the political history of these years that would indicate a return to a collectively oriented system of voter participation.
If we want to be governed by democracy, why not give everyone a realistic chance? I’m pretty sure the green party in America can speak on this behalf. In a winner takes all set up voters get discouraged. A plurality system is not the best to use because it doesn’t allow all voters to express their
Proportional representation is ultimately presented as being the “ideal” system for all legislative houses, because it reduces the problems pertaining towards gerrymandering, malapportionment’s, and pork barrel spending and helps to abide the theory of liberal democracy (Lillingston 2016). Proportional representation ultimately gives minority and independent parties an increased ability to win an election, because parties are forced to appeal to their core supporters. Individuals deserve the right to be