A referendum is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a new policy or specific law, or the referendum may be only advisory. In some countries, it is synonymous with and also known as plebiscite, votation,popular consultation, ballot question, ballot measure, or proposition.
Participatory democracy, participant democracy or participative democracy is a form of government in which citizens participate individually and directly in political decisions and policies that affect their lives, rather than through elected representatives. Elements of direct and representative democracy are combined in this model.
The Australian electoral system comprises the laws and processes used for the election of members of the Australian Parliament and is governed primarily by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The system presently has a number of distinctive features including compulsory enrolment; compulsory voting; majority-preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member seats to elect the lower house, the House of Representatives; and the use of the single transferable vote proportional representation system to elect the upper house, the Senate.
Compulsory voting, also called universal civic duty voting or mandatory voting, is the requirement that registered voters participate in an election. In practice, one only needs to check-in at a polling place, submit a blank ballot, or provide an excused reason, such as disability, illness, age, travel, a natural disaster, or religious objections.
A protest vote is a vote cast in an election to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates or the current political system. Protest voting takes a variety of forms and reflects numerous voter motivations, including political apathy. Where voting is compulsory, casting a blank vote is available for those who do not wish to choose a candidate, or to protest. Unlike abstention elsewhere, blank votes are counted.
Psephology is the "quantitative analysis of elections and balloting", a technique within the branch of political science known as political methodology. Psephology attempts to explain elections using the scientific method and is related to political forecasting.
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."
"Get out the vote" or "getting out the vote" (GOTV) describes efforts aimed at increasing the voter turnout in elections. In countries that do not have or enforce compulsory voting, voter turnout can be low, sometimes even below a third of the eligible voter pool. GOTV efforts typically attempt to register voters, then get them to vote, by absentee ballot, early voting or election day voting. GOTV is generally not required for elections when there are effective compulsory voting systems in place, other than perhaps to register first time voters.
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. Some argue the term 'voter suppression' downplays the harm done when voices aren't reflected in an election, calling for terms like 'vote destruction' that accounts for the permanence of each vote not being cast.
Sir David Edgeworth Butler, was an English political scientist who specialised in psephology, the study of elections. He has been described as "the father of modern election science."
Voter registration in the United States is required for voting in federal, state and local elections in the United States. The only exception is North Dakota, although cities in North Dakota may register voters for city elections. Voter registration takes place at the county level in many states and at the municipal level in several states. Most states set cutoff dates for voter registration and to update details, ranging from 2 to 4 weeks before an election; while a third of states have Election Day or "same-day" voter registration which enables eligible citizens to register or update their registration when they vote before or on election day.
Youth suffrage is the right of youth to vote and forms part of the broader universal suffrage and youth rights movements. Most democracies have lowered the voting age to between 16 and 18, while some advocates for children's suffrage hope to remove age restrictions entirely.
An election boycott is the boycotting of an election by a group of voters, each of whom abstains from voting.
In political science, political apathy is a lack of interest or apathy towards politics. This includes political alienation, voter apathy, information apathy and lack of interest in elections, political events, public meetings, and voting. Voter apathy is a lack of interest among voters in the elections of representative democracies. Political apathy or lack of interest is often cited as a cause of low turnout among eligible voters in jurisdictions where voting is optional, and the donkey vote where voting is compulsory. This phenomenon occurs to some extent across all countries or entities where citizens are able to vote. Political apathy has led to increased concerns regarding representative democracies because election results do not encompass the entire population who are eligible to vote. Political apathy is sometimes considered distinct from political alienation, "the sense that voters feel like the political system does not work for them and any attempt to influence it will be a fruitless exercise." Political alienation is adversely related to political efficacy, the voter's trust in their ability influence to politics. The most common electoral consequences of political alienation are abstention and protest voting.
The historical trends in voter turnout in the United States presidential elections have been determined by the gradual expansion of voting rights from the initial restriction to white male property owners aged 21 or older in the early years of the country's independence to all citizens aged 18 or older in the mid-20th century. Voter turnout in United States presidential elections has historically been higher than the turnout for midterm elections.
Election day or polling day is the day on which general elections are held. In many countries, general elections are always held on a Saturday or Sunday, to enable as many voters as possible to participate; while in other countries elections are always held on a weekday. However, some countries, or regions within a country, which hold elections on a weekday declare election day a public holiday. Countries which permit absentee ballots, early ballots or postal votes to be cast by mail before the election avoid the problem altogether by enabling voters to vote on a day that is more convenient to them.
Clientelism or client politics is the exchange of goods and services for political support, often involving an implicit or explicit quid-pro-quo. It is closely related to patronage politics and vote buying. Clientelism involves an asymmetric relationship between groups of political actors described as patrons, brokers, and clients. In client politics, an organized minority or interest group benefits at the expense of the public. Client politics may have a strong interaction with the dynamics of identity politics. This is particularly common in a pluralist system, such as in the United States, where minorities can have considerable power shaping public policy. The opposite of client politics is 'entrepreneurial' politics, or conviction politics.
Voter ID laws in the United States are laws that require a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote, receive a ballot for an election, or to actually vote in elections in the United States.
Jason F. Brennan is an American philosopher and business professor. He is currently the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.
Elections to the European Parliament saw declining voter turnout between 1979 and 2014. However, voter turnout in 2019 European elections increased by 8 points compared to 2014. In spite of this exception for all Member States, the electoral mobilization remains weak compared to the national parliamentary elections. Moreover, turnout significantly differs from one country to another in Europe and across a time: in 2019 Belgium citizens participated the most with 88.47% and Slovakians the less with 22.74%. The potential factors that might influence these trends and their implications have attracted great scholarly attention. Identifying and analysing the factors that determine the relative low turnout at European elections is therefore critical, as it is one element that weakens the democratic legitimacy of the European Parliament.
