4.1 Electoral Systems and Rules 🗞️

In the United States 🇺🇸, we have a Presidential election every four years and on November 4th, so perhaps you have heard the word election or electoral system somewhere. In AP Comparative Government, you need to be able to describe electoral systems and election rules across all of the course countries. There is some key vocabulary 🔑 that we need to cover before we delve into electoral systems and election rules.

Single-member district: An electoral system in which an electoral district returns one officeholder to a body with multiple members, such as a legislature. This is also sometimes called single-winner voting or winner takes all. Ex. In the United States, a senator is elected from a single-member district.

Multimember district: An electoral district or constituency having two or more representatives in a legislative body rather than one. Ex. If one representative received 60% of the vote and the other 40%, both would be sent to the legislative body. In a single-member district, the representative with 60% would be the only individual elected.

Proportional representation: An electoral system in which parties gain seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them. A party is allocated seats in proportion to the number of votes it receives.

Quotas: A fixed minimum or maximum number of a particular group of people allowed to do something. Ex. A legislature leaving a fixed number of seats for an underrepresented group or region.

First-past-the-post: A “plurality” voting system. In other words, the candidate who wins the most votes in each constituency is elected. This is typically used in single-member districts.

Electoral system: A set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined.

Now that we have covered some key terms that are necessary to describe electoral systems 📑, it is time to look at what type of electoral systems and rules each of our course countries possesses. Please understand that some of the information for the electoral system/electoral rules comes directly from the CED (Course and Exam Description) as it is important to note that examples specifically mentioned in the CED have a high probability of being assessed on the exam.

Understand that with Topic 4.1 you need to be able to describe the electoral system and rules in each of our course countries. The chart above helps you to do this with ease. As you can see, most of our countries rely on either single-member or multi-member districts for their legislative branches.

Proportional representation requires multi-member districts and multiple parties 👯 We will talk more about how regime type influences the amount of democratization and party control in future topics, but you can see from the chart above that authoritarian systems tend to have party control of the electoral process much more than the people, which is less likely in more democratic regimes.