Election

An election is a formal process used by a group to make a collective decision.

In this process, a portion or the entirety of a population votes to choose specific individuals. These people may hold public office or other positions of responsibility. Elections are the primary mechanism for modern representative democracy. This system has been used widely since the 17th century. While often used for government, elections also occur in corporations, clubs, and voluntary associations.

The mechanism of an election follows a specific sequence of steps. First, candidates must be nominated for the position. In many partisan systems, this happens through a preselection process within a political party. Some non-partisan systems allow any eligible person to be nominated directly. Once candidates are set, the electorate casts their ballots. A ballot might be a simple single-choice form or a more complex ranked ballot. After voting, the results are tallied using various counting systems. This tally is then used to allocate seats or offices based on specific rules.

Electoral systems are the constitutional arrangements that turn votes into political decisions. One common method is a plurality system, where the candidate with the most votes wins. This is sometimes called "first-past-the-post" in many different districts. Another method is a majority system, where a candidate must receive more than half of the votes. Some nations use proportional representation to allocate seats. In party-list proportional representation, seats are distributed based on the proportion of votes a party receives.

History shows that humans have used various methods to select leaders for millennia. Ancient Greece and Rome used elections, though Athenian democracy often used "sortition." Sortition is a system where officials are chosen by lot rather than by vote. In Sparta, the first recorded popular elections of officials occurred in 754 BC. These officials were known as Ephors. In the Chola Empire around 920 CE, a system called Kudavolai was used.

In this system, names were written on palm leaves and placed in a mud pot. A young boy would then select the leaves to choose committee members.

The history of the electorate, or the group of people allowed to vote, has changed significantly. Historically, the electorate was often small and limited to privileged groups. In the late Roman Republic, the Lex Julia of 90 BC extended rights to citizens outside Rome. This created an electorate of 910,000 people. However, the turnout in 70 BC was estimated at a maximum of only 10%. In 1780, the Kingdom of Great Britain had about 214,000 eligible voters. This represented only 3% of its total population.

Questions of suffrage, or the right to vote, have been central to political history. For a long time, elections were dominated by the ruling class and men. By 1920, most Western European and North American democracies had universal adult male suffrage. Many countries then began the long process of achieving women's suffrage. Access has not always been fair even when laws allowed it. In Australia, Aboriginal people were not granted the right to vote until 1962. Additionally, in 2010, the federal government removed voting rights for certain prisoners.

Elections function differently depending on the political structure of a country. Many nations operate under a two-party system. In the United States, for example, the main competition is between Democrats and Republicans. Other countries use multi-party systems to represent different ethnic, racial, or regional groups. There is also a distinction between direct and representative democracy. In a direct democracy, people vote on policy decisions themselves. In a representative democracy, people elect others to make those decisions on their behalf.