Electoral democracies require a majority of the votes cast. Many representative democracies are constitutional republics in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law".
The major problem with representative democracies is that voter apathy is more common than political interest. This often means that governments are in power without a mandate, suggesting that they do not have electoral legitimacy, or the right to rule, while in office.
In the 2005 election in the UK, voter turnout was only 61.36% of the electorate, albeit an increase from the from 59.4% turnout in 2001.
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Electoral democracies require a majority of the votes cast. Many representative democracies are constitutional republics in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law".
Criticisms
The major problem with representative democracies is that voter apathy is more common than political interest. This often means that governments are in power without a mandate, suggesting that they do not have electoral legitimacy, or the right to rule, while in office.
United Kingdom
In the 2005 election in the UK, voter turnout was only 61.36% of the electorate, albeit an increase from the from 59.4% turnout in 2001. In Britain of late, there has been considerable discussion as to how the electoral system might be reformed to increase its representativeness. Significant proposals have included:
- introducing more technologically advanced, elector friendly, and secure voting/political communication methods;
- holding two-stage elections or run-off ballots in multi-candidate constituencies so that no candidate can get elected on the basis of just a small portion of the total vote. (Modern developments in tele-voting have enormously increased the speed and reduced the cost and effort of holding such ballots);
- legislating for equal-sized constituencies and adopting measures to ensure more accurate and up-to-date electoral registers;
- halting and reversing recent experiments in Continental European-type indirect (party proportional, corporatist) representation which reduce political competition and voter choice and influence compared with the traditional Anglo-American system of direct (territorial, local community ) representation;
- scrapping various protectionist-type curbs on the private funding boom and advertising of political parties;
- further extending the franchise; and
- increasing the ratio of significant elected to non-elected political posts: creating substantially more elected as opposed to appointed or hereditary positions.
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