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Democracy is a system of government in which state power is vested in the people or the general population of a state. According to the United Nations, democracy "provides an environment that respects human rights and fundamental freedoms, and in which the freely expressed will of people is exercised."
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Compulsory voting, also called universal civic duty voting or mandatory voting, is the requirement that registered voters participate in an election. As of January 2023, 21 countries have compulsory voting laws. Enforcement of the law in those countries varies considerably and the penalty for not casting a ballot without a proper justification ranges from severe to non-existent.
Electronic voting is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots.
Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates, or both. It differs from but often goes hand-in-hand with voter suppression. What exactly constitutes electoral fraud varies from country to country, though the goal is often election subversion.
On the federal level, Russia elects a president as head of state and a parliament, one of the two chambers of the Federal Assembly. The president is elected for, at most, two consecutive six-year terms by the people. The Federal Assembly has two chambers. The State Duma has 450 members, elected for five-year terms. The Federation Council is not directly elected; each of the 85 federal subjects of Russia sends 2 delegates to the Federal Council, for a total of 170 members.
The secret ballot, also known as the Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's identity in an election or a referendum is anonymous. This forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote buying. This system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.
In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford University political scientists Adam Bonica and Michael McFaul, there is a consensus among political scientists that "democracies perform better when more people vote."
Voting rights, specifically enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of different groups, has been a moral and political issue throughout United States history.
In the politics of the United States, elections are held for government officials at the federal, state, and local levels. At the federal level, the nation's head of state, the president, is elected indirectly by the people of each state, through an Electoral College. Today, these electors almost always vote with the popular vote of their state. All members of the federal legislature, the Congress, are directly elected by the people of each state. There are many elected offices at state level, each state having at least an elective governor and legislature. There are also elected offices at the local level, in counties, cities, towns, townships, boroughs, and villages; as well as for special districts and school districts which may transcend county and municipal boundaries.
Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters through persuasion and organization, activating otherwise inactive voters, or registering new supporters. Voter suppression, instead, attempts to gain an advantage by reducing the turnout of certain voters. Suppression is an anti-democratic tactic associated with authoritarianism.
Elections in Egypt are held for the president and a bicameral legislature. The president of Egypt is elected for a six-year term by popular vote after draft amendments to the 2013 constitution altered the presidential term limits from the original four years to six years.
Elections in Cuba are held at municipal, provincial, and national levels. Cuba is a one-party state, with the Communist Party of Cuba being described as the "superior driving force of the society and the state" in the Constitution of Cuba, and the communist party is the only official political party. Elections in Cuba are not considered democratic because the government does not allow free and fair voting.
Elections in Israel are based on nationwide proportional representation. The electoral threshold is currently set at 3.25%, with the number of seats a party receives in the Knesset being proportional to the number of votes it receives. The Knesset is elected for a four-year term, although most governments have not served a full term and early elections are a frequent occurrence. Israel has a multi-party system based on coalition governments as no party has ever won a majority of seats in a national election, although the Alignment briefly held a majority following its formation by an alliance of several different parties prior to the 1969 elections. Suffrage is universal to all Israeli citizens above the age of 18. Israeli citizens living abroad have to travel to Israel in order to vote. Voting booths are made available on Israeli ships. Elections are overseen by the Central Elections Committee, and are held according to the Knesset Elections Law. Israel was ranked 47th most electoral democratic country in the world and the most electoral democratic country in the Middle East according to V-Dem Democracy indices in 2023.
Operation Eagle Eye was a Republican Party voter suppression operation in the 1960s in Arizona to challenge minority voters. In the United States only citizens have ever been able to vote, and in 1964 only literate citizens could vote, so it was legal to ensure that (1) a potential voter was literate, and (2) a potential voter was a United States Citizen. Through the employment of literacy tests, oral demands to interpret the United States Constitution and detailed questions about a potential voter's origins and how long the potential voter had been in the United States, Republican workers would challenge minority voters, especially those with broken English. William Rehnquist, later chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, is said to have been the head of a group of lawyers hoping to challenge voters in minority Democratic precincts. Operation Eagle Eye was a two-year effort, and the laws in Arizona have since made this kind of challenge illegal.
There are five types of elections in the United Kingdom: elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, local elections, mayoral elections, and police and crime commissioner elections. Within each of those categories, there may also be by-elections. Elections are held on Election Day, which is conventionally a Thursday, and under the provisions of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 the timing of general elections can be held at the discretion of the prime minister during any five-year period. All other types of elections are held after fixed periods, though early elections to the devolved assemblies and parliaments can occur in certain situations. The five electoral systems used are: the single member plurality system (first-past-the-post), the multi-member plurality, the single transferable vote, the additional member system, and the supplementary vote.
An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, non-profit organisations and informal organisations. These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, how ballots are marked and 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 use multiple types of elections for different offices.
An unfair election is a concept used by national and international election monitoring groups to identify when the vote of the people for a government is not free and fair. Unfairness in elections encompasses all varieties of electoral fraud, voter suppression or intimidation, unbalanced campaign finance rules, and imbalanced access to the media. Unfair elections violate the right to vote or right to be a candidate or both. The right to vote is generally recognised as an essential element to a deliberative democracy and representative democracy.
Electoral integrity refers to the fairness of the entire voting process and how well the process protects against election subversion, voter suppression, and other threats to free and fair elections. The consequences of unfree or unfair elections can include doubts in the legitimacy of the outcome, loss of faith in the democratic system, and reduced future participation.
Voter suppression in the United States consists of various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote. Such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Voter suppression has historically been used for racial, economic, gender, age and disability discrimination. After the American Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, but poll taxes or language tests were used to limit and suppress the ability to register or cast a ballot. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 improved voting access significantly. Since the beginning of voter suppression efforts, proponents of these laws have cited concerns over electoral integrity as a justification, while opponents note how often that argument continues to be used in bad faith with little if any evidence to justify both the concerns and measures taken to address them.
References
- ↑ Elklit, Jorgen; Svensson, Palle (1997). "What Makes Elections Free and Fair?" (PDF). Journal of Democracy. 8 (3): 32–46. doi:10.1353/jod.1997.0041. S2CID 154766533.
- 1 2 3 Bishop, Sylvia; Hoeffler, Anke (2016). "Free and fair elections: A new database". Journal of Peace Research. 53 (4): 608–616. doi:10.1177/0022343316642508. S2CID 110571606.
- ↑ https://www.v-dem.net/documents/24/codebook_v13.pdf Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Sandra Grahn, Allen Hicken, Katrin Kinzelbach, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Anja Neundorf, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Oskar Rydén, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Luca Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2023. V-Dem Codebook v13, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.