   #copyright

Voting

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Politics and government

   Voting is a method of decision making wherein a group such as a meeting
   or an electorate attempts to gauge its opinion—usually as a final step
   following discussions or debates. Alternatives to voting include
   consensus decision making (which works to avoid polarization and the
   marginalization of dissent) and betting (as in an anticipatory
   democracy).

Reasons for voting

   In a democracy, voting commonly implies election, i.e. a way for an
   electorate to select among candidates for office. In politics voting is
   the method by which the electorate of a democracy appoints
   representatives in its government.

   A vote, or a ballot, is an individual's act of voting, by which he or
   she express support or preference for a certain motion (e.g. a proposed
   resolution), a certain candidate, or a certain selection of candidates.
   A secret ballot, the standard way to protect voters' political privacy,
   generally takes place at a polling station. (Compare postal ballot).
   The act of voting in most countries is voluntary, however some
   countries, such as Australia, Belgium and Brazil, have compulsory
   voting systems.

   Though voting is usually recognized as one of the main characteristics
   of democracy, a country's having an election featuring the populace
   casting votes does not necessarily mean the country is democratic. Many
   authoritarian governments have "elections" but the candidates are
   pre-chosen and approved by elites, there is no competition, voter
   qualifications are restrictive, and voting is often a sham.

   Some people think that whenever votes are recorded in a medium which is
   invisible to humans, electors lose any possibility to verify how their
   votes are collected and tallied up to produce the final result, thus
   they need to have an absolute faith in the accuracy, honesty and
   security of the whole electoral apparatus. This is said to be
   particularly true for electronic elections because, for people who
   didn’t program them, computers act just like black boxes and their
   operations can truly be verified only by knowing the input and
   comparing the expected output with the actual output , but under a
   secret ballot system, there is no known input, nor is there any
   expected output with which to compare electoral results . On the other
   hand, this is a problem to some degree with every form of a secret
   ballot; it is impossible for an individual voter to personally follow
   the custody or his or her vote once it is placed into the ballot box.

Types of votes

   Different voting systems use different types of vote. Suppose that the
   options in some election are Alice, Bob, Charlie, Daniel, and Emily.

   In a voting system that uses a single vote, the voter can select one of
   the five that they most approve of. First past the post uses single
   votes. So, a voter might vote for Charlie. This precludes him voting
   for anyone else.

   In a voting system that uses a multiple vote, the voter can vote for
   any subset of the alternatives. So, a voter might vote for Alice, Bob,
   and Charlie, rejecting Daniel and Emily. Approval voting uses such
   multiple votes.

   In a voting system that uses a ranked vote, the voter has to rank the
   alternatives in order of preference. For example, they might vote for
   Bob in first place, then Emily, then Alice, then Daniel, and finally
   Charlie. Many voting systems use ranked votes. See preference voting.

   In a voting system that uses a scored vote (or range vote), the voter
   gives each alternative a number between one and ten (the upper and
   lower bounds may vary). See range voting.

Fair voting

   Kenneth Arrow lists five characteristics of a fair voting system.
   However, Arrow's impossibility theorem shows that it is impossible for
   any voting system to have all 5 characteristics at the same time.

   Casting a vote expresses an implied willingness to participate in a
   common process with some shared outcome. Those who feel unable to
   express their limits or boundaries of tolerance in a voting system may
   be more likely to resist or fight or fail to support decisions made
   through it (more of an issue with parties or policies). Those who feel
   unable to express their real preferences may lack all enthusiasm for
   the choices or for the eventually chosen representative or leader. Any
   vote balances both kinds of considerations.

   One common issue, especially in first-past-the-post systems, is that of
   the protest vote: one might "waste one's vote" on a minor party to send
   a signal of strong preference for a candidate or party that cannot win,
   or of intolerance for the "more mainstream" options. However it is
   difficult to tell from the vote alone whether one is positively
   inclined to the minor party or negatively inclined to the major party.
   Russia offers its electors a " None of the Above" option, so that
   protest votes can be properly tallied. Other jurisdictions may record
   the incidence of (apparently deliberately) spoiled ballot papers.

   Also, it is often not clear whether the voter really understands how
   his or her vote is counted in the voting system, especially with the
   more complex types. This often leads to issues with the results. Ballot
   design and the use of voting machines have particular importance, given
   this issue. Optimally participants in a vote should perceive the
   results, especially of a political vote, as fair. If fairness appears
   lacking, resistance to the results may lead at best to confusion, at
   worst to violence and even civil war, in the case of political rivals.

   In an effort to make balloting cheaper and more transparent, Brazil
   introduced electronic voting in all levels of elections, gradually
   since 1994. By 2002 general elections, all voting in Brazil was cast on
   electronic system, with paper ballots being used only in last case
   emergencies (such as black-outs). Argentina followed in 14 September
   2003, for a gubernatorial election. This pilot test involved 500,000
   voters distributed among 20 constituencies in the eastern Argentine
   province of Buenos Aires.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
