The electoral system establishes how citizens can intervene in political decisions through voting.
The electoral system is the structure made up of the regulations and processes that, established by law , allow citizens to intervene in political decisions through voting . It could be said that, through the electoral system, individuals become voters and select the leaders who occupy various public positions in the government .
It should be noted that the notion is made up of two terms: system (the ordered module of components that are interrelated and that maintain interactions with each other) and electoral (that linked to elections and voters).
The activity of political parties, the mechanisms through which citizens cast their vote , the counting of votes and the distribution of positions according to the results of the election are some of the issues that are linked to the electoral system. valid in a certain territory.
Example of electoral system
Let's look at a simple and fictitious example to understand how an electoral system works. In a country
According to what is defined by this system, the vote is secret and is cast through ballots that are placed in ballot boxes. The president is the candidate who obtains the most votes: if he fails to establish a difference of more than 10% with respect to the second or obtains less than 50% of the votes, a second round of voting is held between the two candidates with the greatest number of votes.
The electoral system is made up of regulations and processes.
The Spanish case
In Spain , for example, citizens aged 18 and over vote to elect not only their mayors but also the presidents of the different autonomous communities and, of course, the deputies and senators who will shape the Congress and the Senate . Hence, therefore, there are local, regional and general elections.
Another of the bases of the Spanish electoral system in the case of general elections is that it is based on the so-called d'Hont system , which dates back to the 19th century and which establishes a proportional calculation. Thus, when it comes to knowing the seats of each party, you must follow these steps:
- The votes obtained are counted and the numbers of votes obtained by each candidate are ordered from highest to lowest in a column.
- Then we proceed to "eliminate" the candidates that have not obtained at least 3% of the valid votes cast.
- Next, what is done is to divide the number of votes cast for each candidacy by 1, 2 and 3 and so on up to the number equal to the number of seats that corresponds to that electoral constituency. In that sense, it must be established that these seats will be distributed to the candidates that have logically obtained the most votes and that is something that will be done in a decreasing manner.
The key to this aforementioned d'Hont electoral system is that the candidates with the most votes are rewarded and those who have obtained the fewest votes at the polls are "punished" .