Absentee ballotAn absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station to which the voter is normally allocated. Methods include voting at a different location, postal voting, proxy voting and online voting. Increasing the ease of access to absentee ballots is seen by many as one way to improve voter turnout through convenience voting, though some countries require that a valid reason, such as infirmity or travel, be given before a voter can participate in an absentee ballot.
Voter registrationIn electoral systems, voter registration (or enrollment) is the requirement that a person otherwise eligible to vote must register (or enroll) on an electoral roll, which is usually a prerequisite for being entitled or permitted to vote. The rules governing registration vary between jurisdictions. In many jurisdictions, registration is an automatic process performed by extracting the names of voting age residents of a precinct from a general-use population registry ahead of election day, while in others, registration may require an application being made by an eligible voter and registered persons to re-register or update registration details when they change residence or other relevant information changes.
Weighted votingWeighted voting can exist in a policy or law making body in which each representative has a variable voting power (weighted vote) as determined by the number principals who have made that person their proxy, or the population or the electorate they serve. By contrast weighted preference/preferential voting typically amasses a qualitative verdict of the voters. Within this form of ranked voting, a few advanced proportional voting methods ask each voter to grade the suitability for office of as many candidates as they wish.
Exhaustive ballotThe exhaustive ballot is a voting system used to elect a single winner. Under the exhaustive ballot the elector casts a single vote for their chosen candidate. However, if no candidate is supported by an overall majority of votes then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and a further round of voting occurs. This process is repeated for as many rounds as necessary until one candidate has a majority. The exhaustive ballot is similar to the two-round system but with key differences.
Participation criterionThe participation criterion is a voting system criterion. Voting systems that fail the participation criterion are said to exhibit the no show paradox and allow a particularly unusual strategy of tactical voting: abstaining from an election can help a voter's preferred choice win. The criterion has been defined as follows: In a deterministic framework, the participation criterion says that the addition of a ballot, where candidate A is strictly preferred to candidate B, to an existing tally of votes should not change the winner from candidate A to candidate B.
Apportionment (politics)Apportionment is the process by which seats in a legislative body are distributed among administrative divisions, such as states or parties, entitled to representation. This page presents the general principles and issues related to apportionment. The page Apportionment by country describes specific practices used around the world. The page Mathematics of apportionment describes mathematical formulations and properties of apportionment rules. The simplest and most universal principle is that elections should give each voter's intentions equal weight.
DemocratizationDemocratization, or democratisation, is the democratic transition to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction. Whether and to what extent democratization occurs can be influenced by various factors, including economic development, historical legacies, civil society, and international processes. Some accounts of democratization emphasize how elites drove democratization, whereas other accounts emphasize grassroots bottom-up processes.
Dictatorship mechanismIn social choice theory, a dictatorship mechanism is a rule by which, among all possible alternatives, the results of voting mirror a single pre-determined person's preferences, without consideration of the other voters. Dictatorship by itself is not considered a good mechanism in practice, but it is theoretically important: by Arrow's impossibility theorem, when there are at least three alternatives, dictatorship is the only ranked voting electoral system that satisfies unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives.
Political apathyIn 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.
RedistrictingRedistricting in the United States is the process of drawing electoral district boundaries. For the United States House of Representatives, and state legislatures, redistricting occurs after each decennial census. The U.S. Constitution in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 provides for proportional representation in the House of Representatives. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 required that the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives be kept at a constant 435, and a 1941 act made the reapportionment among the states by population automatic after every decennial census.
