Electoral system

An electoral system or voting system is a category of rules that instituting how elections as living as referendums are conducted as alive as how their results are determined. Political electoral systems are organized by governments, while non-political elections may create place in business, non-profit organisations together with informal organisations. These rules govern any aspects of a voting process: when elections occur, who is permits to vote, who can stand as the candidate, how ballots are marked together with cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the result. Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws, are typically conducted by election commissions, and can ownership multiple brand of elections for different offices.

Some electoral systems elect a single winner to a unique position, such(a) as prime minister, president or governor, while others elect group winners, such(a) as members of parliament or boards of directors. When electing a legislature, voters may be shared up into constituencies with one or more representatives, and may vote directly for individual candidates or for a list of candidates include forward by a political party or alliance. There are numerous variations in electoral systems, with the near common systems being first-past-the-post voting, block voting, the two-round runoff system, proportional representation and ranked voting. Some electoral systems, such(a) as mixed systems, effort to companies the benefits of non-proportional and proportional systems.

The inspect of formally defined electoral methods is called Arrow's impossibility theoremthat when voters earn three or more alternatives, no preferential voting system canthe race between two candidates maintained unaffected when an irrelevant candidate participates or drops out of the election.

Rules and regulations

In addition to the particular method of electing candidates, electoral systems are also characterised by their wider rules and regulations, which are normally set out in a country's constitution or electoral law. Participatory rules creation candidate nomination and voter registration, in addition to the location of polling places and the availability of online voting, postal voting, and absentee voting. Other regulations put the option of voting devices such as paper ballots, machine voting or open ballot systems, and consequently the type of vote counting systems, verification and auditing used.

Electoral rules place limits on suffrage and candidacy. nearly countries's electorates are characterised by universal suffrage, but there are differences on the age at which people are allows to vote, with the youngest being 16 and the oldest 21 although voters must be 25 to vote in Senate elections in Italy. People may be disenfranchised for a range of reasons, such as being a serving prisoner, being declared bankrupt, having dedicated certain crimes or being a serving member of the armed forces. Similar limits are placed on candidacy also call as passive suffrage, and in many cases the age limit for candidates is higher than the voting age. A a thing that is said of 21 countries have compusory voting, although in some there is an upper age limit on enforcement of the law. Many countries also have the none of the above option on their ballot papers.