Encyclopedia
An
election is a
decision making process where people
vote for preferred political candidates or
parties to act as representatives in government. This is the usual mechanism by which modern
democracy fills offices in the
legislature, and sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and in regional and local government. This is also typically the case in a wide range of other private and
business organizations, from clubs to voluntary associations and
corporations.
The universal acceptance of elections as a tool for selecting representatives in modern democracies is in sharp contrast with the practice in the democratic archetype, ancient
Athens, where elections were considered an oligarchic institution and where most political offices were filled using allotment / sortition.
Electoral reform describes the process of introducing fair and democratic electoral systems where they are not in place, or improving the fairness or effectiveness of existing systems. Psephology is the study of results and other
statistics relating to elections .
Definitions of democratic elections
In political theory, the authority of the government in democracies 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.
There is a broad consensus as to what kind of elections can be considered free and fair.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, scholar and former
United States 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 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". This was more formally stated in 2000 by Chief Justice
Murray Gleeson of the
Australian High Court as "The democratic and lawful means of securing change, if change be necessary, is an expression of the will of an informed electorate."
The apparently simple requirement of an informed electorate is difficult to achieve in modern electorates with thousands of voters, most of whom have no prospects of knowing candidates other than by information published by third parties. The party with the most immediate interest in having structural biases is the government conducting the election. One possible result is the 'show' elections described below.
Some 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 an unelected
British administrator but was generally considered to be a free and open society due to its strong legal institutions.
Characteristics of elections
Who can vote
The question of who may vote is a central issue in elections. The electorate does not generally include the entire population; for example, many countries prohibit those judged mentally incomptent from voting, and all jurisdictions require a minimum age for voting.
Historically, many other groups of people have also been excluded from voting. For instance, the democracy of ancient Athens did not allow women, foreigners, or slaves to vote, and the original
United States Constitution permitted only white male property owners to vote. Much of the history of elections involves the effort to promote suffrage for excluded groups. The
women's suffrage movement gave women in many countries the right to vote, and securing the right to vote freely was a major goal of the American civil rights movement. Extending the right to vote to other groups which remain excluded in some places continues to be a significant goal of voting rights advocates.
In some countries, voting is required by law; if an eligible voter does not cast a vote, he or she may be subject to punitive measures such as a small fine.
Who can be eligible to hold an office
Normally there is a citizenship requirement, an age requirement, a residency requirement, and, perhaps, a non-felon requirement.
Nomination
In a direct democracy, any eligible person can be nominated. In some countries, only members of a particular
political party can be nominated. Or, an eligible person can be nominated through a petition; thus allowing him or her to be listed on a
ballot. In the United States, for example, typically party candidates are required to have fewer signatures on petitions than non-party candidates.
Who is elected
The government positions for which elections are held vary depending on the locale. In a representative democracy, such as the United States, some positions are not filled through elections, especially those which are seen as requiring a certain competency or excellence.
For example,
judges are usually appointed rather than elected to help protect their impartiality. There are exceptions to this practice, however; some judges in the United States are elected, and in ancient
Athens military generals were elected.
In some cases, as, for example, in soviet democracy -- there may exist an intermediate tier of electors between constituents and the elected figure. In most representative democracies though, this level of indirection is usually something of a formality. For example, the
President of the United States is elected by the
Electoral College, and in the
Westminster System, the
Prime Minister is formally chosen by the
head of state .
Types of election
In most democratic political systems, there are a range of different types of election, corresponding to different layers of public governance or geographical jurisdiction. Some common types of election are:
A referendum is a democratic tool related to elections in which the electorate votes for or against a specific proposal, law or policy, rather than for a general policy or a particular candidate or party. Referendums may be added to an election ballot or held separately and may be either binding or consultative, usually depending on the
constitution. Referendums are usually called by governments via the legislature, however many democracies allow citizens to petition for referendums directly, called
initiatives.
Referendums are particularly prevalent and important in direct democracies, such as
Switzerland. The basic Swiss system, however, still works with representatives. In the most direct form of democracy, anyone can vote about anything. This is closely related to referendums and may take the form of consensus decision-making. Reminiscent of the ancient Greek system, anyone may discuss a particular subject until a consensus is reached. The consensus requirement means that discussions can go on for a very long time. The result will be that only those who are genuinely interested will participate in the discussion and therefore the vote. In this system there need not be an age limit because children will usually become bored. This system is however only feasible when implemented on a very small scale.
Electoral systems
Electoral systems refer to 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.
The first step is to tally the votes, for which various different vote counting systems and
ballot types are used. Voting systems then determine the result on the basis of the tally. Most 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 and absolute majority. Many countries have growing electoral reform movements, which advocate systems such as
approval voting,
single transferable vote,
instant runoff voting or a Condorcet method.
While openness and accountability are usually considered cornerstones of a democratic system, the act of casting a vote and the content of a voter's ballot are usually an important exception. The
secret ballot is a relatively modern development, but it is now considered crucial in most free and fair elections, as it limits the effectiveness of intimidation.
Scheduling
The nature of democracy is that elected officials are accountable to the people, and they must return to the voters at prescribed intervals to seek their mandate to continue in office. For that reason most democratic constitutions provide that elections are held at fixed regular intervals. In most states elections are held between every three and six years. There are exceptions to this; the U.S.
House of Representives stands for election every two years, while the
President of Ireland holds a largely ceremonial position for seven years.
Pre-determined or fixed election dates have the advantage of fairness and predictability. However, it tends to greatly lengthen campaigns, and makes dissolving the legislature more problematic if the date should happen to fall at time when dissolution is inconvenient . Other states only set maximum time in office, and the executive decides exactly when within that limit it will actually go to the polls. In practice, this means the government will remain in power full term unless something special happens, such as a motion of no-confidence.
Election campaigns
When elections are called, politicians and their supporters attempt to influence policy by competing directly for the votes of constituents in what are called
campaigns. Supporters for a campaign can be either formally organized or loosely affiliated, and frequently utilize campaign advertising.
Difficulties with elections
Show elections
While all modern democracies hold regular elections, the converse is not true—not all elections are held by true democracies. Some governments employ other 'behind-the-scenes' means of candidate selection but organise a sham process that appears to be a genuine electoral contest, in order to present the façade of popular consent and support.
Dictatorships, such as the former
Soviet Union, have been known to hold such
show elections. In the 'single candidate' type of show-election, there may only be one candidate for any one given position, with no alternative choices for voters beyond voting yes or no to this candidate. In the 'fixed vote' type of show-election such elections may offer several candidates for each office. In both cases, the government uses intimidation or vote-rigging to ensure a high yes vote or that only the government-approved candidates are chosen.
Another model is the 'false diversity' type of show-election in which there may be several choices, all of which support the status quo. In theory, 'false diversity' elections would be recognised by a truly informed electorate but as noted above this may be impossible, for example where a government conducting elections also controls the media by which most voters are informed. Examples of this are given below.
Bias and limited options
Similar to the false diversity elections are those in which candidates are limited by undemocratic forces and biases. The Iranian form of government is one example of elections among limited options. In the 2004 Iranian parliamentary elections almost all of the reformist candidates were ruled unfit by the Guardian Council of religious leaders. According to the
Iranian constitution this was fully within the Council's constitutional rights, and designed to prevent enemies of the
Islamic Revolution from coming to power.
Simply permitting the opposition access to the ballot is not enough. In order for democratic elections to be fair and competitive, opposition parties and candidates must enjoy the rights to
freedom of speech,
assembly, and movement as necessary to voice their criticisms of the government openly and to bring alternative policies and candidates to the voters. In states where these freedoms are not granted or where opposition party politicians are harassed and their events disrupted, elections may not reflect the legitimate views of the populace. A current example of such a state is
Zimbabwe. In states with fragile democracies where there has been a history of political violence or blatantly unfair elections, international election observers are often called in by external bodies like the United Nations, and protected by foreign forces, to guarantee fairness.
In addition, elections in which opposition candidates are not given access to radio, newspaper and television coverage are also likely to be biased. An example of this kind of structural bias was the 2004 re-election of
Russian president
Vladimir Putin, in which the state controlled media consistently supported his election run, consistently condemned his opponents, provided virtually unlimited free advertising to Putin's campaign, and barred attempts by his opponents to run campaign advertisements. For this reason, many countries ensure equal air time to election ads from all sizeable parties and have systems that help pay for election advertising or, conversely, limit the possibilities to advertise, to prevent rich parties or candidates from oustripping their opponents.
Some allege that beyond the examples given here, there are more subtle and systemic forms of 'false-diversity' in elections which are not generally recognised.
Noam Chomsky and other critics argue that in the West, and especially the US, powerful corporate interests behind the
media act as a filter that, statistically, only lets preordained views be heard by the public and excludes third parties and alternative viewpoints. They point out that in the U.S., the two big political parties are both sponsored by essentially the same large corporations , thereby representing the interests of a tiny minority of citizens and no political parties representing the vast majority of relatively poor citizens have any realistic chance of having their political platforms presented to the public through the corporate controlled media. In this sense, they argue that the U.S. has what is in practice a one-party political system.
Corruption of democracies
The very openness of a democracy means that in many states it is possible for voters to vote to get rid of democracy itself.
Democracies have failed many times in history from
ancient Greece to 18th and 19th century
France , and perhaps most famously in 20th century
Germany, when the
Nazis initially came to power by democratic means . Throughout most of the developing world today democracies remain unstable, often collapsing to military
coups or other forms of dictatorship. Thinkers such as
Aristotle and many others long believed democracy to be inherently unstable and to always quickly collapse.
Most democracies have some form of separation of powers mandated by the
constitution. This is a device limiting the power of any specific elected body with the aim of preventing elected representatives from changing some of the characteristics of the government. Changing the constitution is made difficult in various ways, such as by requiring a ? majority in two consecutive elected governments for the change to take effect—the actual requirements vary by each constitutional system.
To limit this danger the system used in many states indirectly places limits on how easily new parties can form. The
first past the post electoral system makes it hard for new parties to quickly gain power. In states using proportional representation systems, there is a determined proportion of the popular vote that must be won before a party can be admitted to parliament. This election threshold may be simply the amount of votes required to get one seat, such as in the
Netherlands, but it may also be set higher, to prevent small parties from getting a seat in government.
Elections around the world
See also
- Bipartidism
- Democracy
- Demarchy — "Democracy without Elections"
- Electoral calendar
- Election law
- Electoral fraud
- Criticisms of electoralism
- Electoral Reform
- Foreign interference with elections in democratic countries
- Full slate
-
- Garrat Elections
- Gerontocracy
- Meritocracy
- Pluralism
- Political campaigning
- Political science
- Polling station
- Sortition
- Allotment
- Appointment
- Voter turnout
- Close elections
Bibliography
- Mueller, Dennis C. 1996. Constitutional Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Riker, William. 1980. Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
- Ware, Alan. 1987. Citizens, Parties and the State. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
External links
