Wasted voteIn electoral systems, a wasted vote is any vote that does not receive representation in the final election outcome. This includes lost votes for a losing candidate or party, and excess votes for winning candidates in excess of the minimum needed to win. When applied to ranked-vote systems, it includes exhausted votes, votes where none of the candidates the voter ranked are elected. Wasted vote share changes from one election to another depending on voter behavior. Wasted votes can lead to political apathy.
Voter suppressionVoter 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.
Primary electionPrimary elections, or direct primary are a voting process by which voters can indicate their preference for their party's candidate, or a candidate in general, in an upcoming general election, local election, or by-election. Depending on the country and administrative divisions within the country, voters might consist of the general public in what is called an open primary, or solely the members of a political party in what is called a closed primary.
TurkeyTurkey (Türkiye, ˈtyɾcije), officially the Republic of Türkiye (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti ˈtyɾcije dʒumˈhuːɾijeti), is a country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in West Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the east; Iraq to the southeast; Syria and the Mediterranean Sea to the south; the Aegean Sea to the west; and Greece and Bulgaria to the northwest. Cyprus is off the south coast.
New ZealandNew Zealand (Aotearoa aɔˈtɛaɾɔa) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) and the South Island (Te Waipounamu)—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions.
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.
Multi-party systemIn political science, a multi-party system is a political system in which multiple political parties across the political spectrum run for national elections, and all have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coalition. Apart from one-party-dominant and two-party systems, multi-party systems tend to be more common in parliamentary systems than presidential systems and far more common in countries that use proportional representation compared to countries that use first-past-the-post elections.
One man, one vote"One man, one vote", or "one person, one vote", expresses the principle of equal representation in voting. This slogan is used by advocates of democracy and political equality, especially with regard to electoral reforms like universal suffrage and proportional representation. The violation of equal representation in the various systems of proportional representation can be measured with the Loosemore–Hanby index, the Gallagher index, or the amount of wasted vote.
Political efficacyIn political science, political efficacy is the citizens' trust in their ability to change the government and belief that they can understand and influence political affairs. It is commonly measured by surveys and is used as an indicator for the broader health of civil society. It was introduced by Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, and W. E. Miller during an analyses of behavior and attitude of the voters in the 1952 United States presidential election and defined as the "feeling that individual action does have, or can have, an impact upon the political process".
Unfair electionAn 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, which is generally recognised as an essential element to a deliberative democracy and representative democracy.