Proportional representation (PR) refers to any type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions among voters. The essence of such systems is that all votes cast – or almost all votes cast – contribute to the result and are effectively used to help elect someone. Under other election systems, a bare plurality or a scant majority are all that are used to elect candidates. PR systems provide balanced representation to different factions, reflecting how votes are cast.
In political science, parallel voting or superposition refers to the use of two or more electoral systems to elect different members of a legislature. More precisely, an electoral system is a superposition if it is a mixture of at least two tiers, which do not interact with each other in any way; one part of a legislature is elected using one method, while another part is elected using a different method, with all voters participating in both. Thus, the final results can be found by calculating the results for each system separately based on the votes alone, then adding them together. A system is called fusion or majority bonus, another independent mixture of two system but without two tiers. Superposition is also not the same as "coexistence", which when different districts in the same election use different systems. Superposition, fusion and coexistence are distinct from dependent mixed electoral systems like compensatory (corrective) and conditional systems.
At a national level, Greece holds elections for its legislature, the Hellenic Parliament.
Armenia has a multi-party system. After the 2015 Armenian constitutional referendum, only a legislature is elected on the national level.
A plurality or majority bonus system (MBS) (also called minority friendly majoritarian electoral system) is a mixed-member, partly-proportional electoral system that gives extra seats in a legislature to the party with a plurality or majority of seats. Typically, this is done with the aim of providing government stability, particularly in parliamentary systems.
The 1994 Italian general election was held on 27 and 28 March 1994 to elect members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic for the 12th legislature. Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition won a large majority in the Chamber of Deputies but just missed winning a majority in the Senate.
A snap election was held in Italy on 13–14 April 2008. The election came after President Giorgio Napolitano dissolved the Italian Parliament on 6 February 2008, following the defeat of the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi in a January 2008 Senate vote of confidence and the unsuccessful tentative appointment of Franco Marini with the aim to change the current electoral law. Under Italian law, elections must be held within 70 days of the dissolution. The voting determined the leader of Italy's 62nd government since the end of World War II. The coalition led by ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from The People of Freedom party defeated that of former Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni of the Democratic Party.
The 1995 Lombard regional election took place on 23 April 1995. The 6th term of the Regional Council was chosen.
Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results.
Semi-proportional representation characterizes multi-winner electoral systems which allow representation of minorities, but are not intended to reflect the strength of the competing political forces in close proportion to the votes they receive. Semi-proportional voting systems are generally used as a compromise between complex and expensive but more-proportional systems and simple winner-take-all systems. Examples of semi-proportional systems include the single non-transferable vote, limited voting, and parallel voting.
An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. 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.
A winner-take-all electoral system is one where a voting bloc can win all seats in a legislature or electoral district, denying representation to any political minorities. Such systems are used in many major democracies. Such systems are sometimes called "majoritarian representation", though this term is a misnomer, as most such systems do not always elect majority preferred candidates and do not always produce winners who received majority of votes cast in the district, and they allow parties to take a majority of seats in the chamber with just a minority of the vote.
The Italian electoral law of 2015, also known as Italicum, was an Italian electoral law passed in 2015. The law, which came into force on 1 July 2016, regulated only the election of the Chamber of Deputies, replacing the Italian electoral law of 2005, which had been ruled partly unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Italy in December 2013. It provided for a two-round system based on party-list proportional representation, including a majority bonus and a 3% election threshold. Candidates would have run in 100 multi-member constituencies using open lists. The largest party which won over 40% of the vote would automatically win a majority of seats; if no party won 40% of seats, a second round of voting would be held between the two largest parties, with the winner of the second round winning a majority of seats. The name "Italicum" was coined in 2014 by Democratic Party secretary and later Prime Minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi, who was one of the legislation's main proponent.
The Sardinian regional election of 2014 in Italy took place on 16 February 2014.
General elections were held in San Marino on 20 November 2016 and 4 December 2016. The San Marino First alliance received a plurality of the popular vote, but fell short of a majority in the Grand and General Council, initially being allocated 25 seats. As no single bloc had won a majority of seats, a runoff was held on 4 December 2016 between the top two coalitions, San Marino First and Adesso.sm, to determine the winner of the majority prize. The second round saw Adesso.sm win with 58% of the vote, resulting in seats being reallocated and the winning alliance receiving 35 seats.
A mixed electoral system is one that uses different electoral systems to elect different seats in a legislature. Most often, this involves a winner-take-all component combined with a proportional component. The results of the combination may be mixed-member proportional (MMP), where the overall results of the elections are proportional, or mixed-member majoritarian, in which case the overall results are semi-proportional, retaining disproportionalities from the majoritarian component. Systems that use multiple types of combinations are sometimes called supermixed.
The Italian electoral law of 2017, colloquially known by the nickname Rosatellum after Ettore Rosato, the Democratic Party (PD) leader in the Chamber of Deputies who first proposed the new law, is a parallel voting system, which acts as a mixed electoral system, with 37% of seats allocated using a first-past-the-post electoral system and 63% using a proportional method, with one round of voting. The Chamber and Senate of the Republic did not differ in the way they allocated the proportional seats, both using the largest remainder method of allocating seats.
The law no. 270 of 21 December 2005 was a proportional electoral law with a majority prize and blocked lists that regulated the election of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in Italy in 2006, 2008 and 2013.
Mixed-member majoritarian representation (MMM) is type of a mixed electoral system combining winner-take-all and proportional methods, where the disproportional results of the winner-take-all part are dominant over the proportional component. Mixed member majoritarian systems are therefore categorized under semi-proportional representation, and are usually contrasted with mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) which aims to provide proportional representation compensation ("top-up") seats.
Compensation or correction is an optional mechanism of electoral systems, which corrects the results of one part of the system based on some criterion to achieve a certain result, usually to make it more proportional. There are in general two forms of compensation: vote linkage and seat linkage.
