Polity : Multiple winner voting system

Multiple winner voting system 
  • I will explain this with an example. Assume that a state has 100 legislative seats and party A got 55 seats,party B got 25 and party C got the remaining 20. That is the first part of the election and in the second part proportionality  comes into picture.Lets consider that Party A got 45% of total votes,Party B got 40% and party C got the remaining. Then the most popular 45, 40 and 5 members of part A, part B and part C go to assembly respectively.
  • Participants in a multiple winner election are more concerned with the overall composition of the legislature than exactly which candidates get elected. For this reason, many multiple-winner systems aim for proportional representation, which means that if a given party (or any other political grouping) gets X% of the vote, it should also get approximately X% of the seats in the legislature. Not all multiple-winner voting systems are proportional.Most of the Western countries excluding US and UK, use the multiple-winner method of proportional vote.
  •   Multiple winner voting system is broadly classified into 2 types. 1. Proportional representation and 2. Semi-proportional representation.
Proportional representation 
  • A party that receives 50% of the votes receives 50% of the seats. Party-proportional systems can help address gender or ethnic equity. Proportional representation can be implemented in 2 types. 1. Party-list proportional representation  and 2. Single transferable vote. 
  • Party-list proportional representation : In these system parties make lists of candidates to be elected, and seats get allocated to each party in proportion to the number of votes the party receives. Voters may vote, 1. directly for the party, 2.for candidates and that vote will pool to the party, or 3. for a list of candidates. The order in which a party's list candidates get elected may be pre-determined by some method internal to the party or the candidates (a closed list system) or it may be determined by the voters at large (an open list system). 
  • Single transferable vote : In STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, any surplus or unused votes are transferred according to the voter's stated preferences. The system minimizes "wasted" votes, provides approximately proportional representation, and enables votes to be explicitly cast for individual candidates rather than for closed party lists.
Semi-proportional representation 
  • The choice to use a semi-proportional voting system may be a deliberate attempt to find a balance between majority rule and proportional representation: semi-proportional systems can allow for fairer representation of those parties that have difficulty gaining individual seats while still keeping the possibility of one party gaining a majority when there is a landslide victory.Two major variants of Semi-proportional representation are 1. Cumulative voting and 2. Single non-transferable vote. 
  • C umulative voting : Here for n number of seats, voters have n votes.They can distribute the votes among the candidates. Also  voters are permitted to not split their votes and instead concentrate them on a single candidate at full value. It  elects the top vote-getters finally.
  • S ingle non-transferable vote : In any election, each voter casts one vote for one candidate in a multi-candidate race for multiple offices. Posts are filled by the candidates with the most votes. In a three-seat constituency, the three candidates receiving the largest numbers of votes would win office.

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