Understanding Politics

Understanding Politics

1. First-past-the-post/plurality electoral systems and their representatives do more constituency work than PR.

   • Ticket splitting revolves around the idea of distributing seats between constituency contests and list votes where each voter gets two ballots independent from one another (one for constituency, the other for list) Parties who do poorly in their constituencies depend on stable support among the list votes to recoup earlier losses. It affects proportionality however if individuals back different parties at the constituency and list level. Larger parties benefit because voters are less likely to waste their vote in the constituency contest on smaller parties, and as German voting suggests, stronger parties are more likely to retain straight-ticket voters, whilst weaker parties are more likely to earn only 1 of a voter’s 2 votes. Thus MMP systems tend to benefit larger stronger parties due to them having a greater chance of winning seats both from constituencies and from their list level votes.

2. Ontario was the only province in 2007 that rejected a Mixed Member Proportional electoral system

   • Alisa Henderson said MMP prevented smaller parties from being underrepresented in countries like New Zealand and Wales
   • In 2013, it is false that B.C's Chief Electoral officer found that voting online had a significant voter participation among young people who could use their phones.

3. It is false that two U.S elections were won by a faithless voter in 1888 and 1976. (But it was in JFK and Bush Elections)

   • The third person in line to succeed the POTUS and VPOTUS is the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
     • Which part of Congress elects the Vice President in the event no candidate receives a majority in the Electoral College. US House of Representatives
     • Congressional District Method - Maine and Nebraska
   • The federalism bonus in the U.S is when larger states are overrepresented and smaller states are underrepresented. This makes for an intentionally slightly disproportionate system.

4. Liberum veto or "free veto" - Poland (electoral unanimity)

   • Under France’s Run-Off system, if no candidate win 50% + 1 of the vote in the first round, which candidates get to move on to the second round. All candidates who have at least 12.5% of the vote.
     • What does the term “threshold” mean in the context of elections held using a system of Proportional Representation. You must achieve a minimum number of percentage votes to qualify for seats by proportionality, usually 5%. (lowest threshold is Mexico with 2%, highest is in Turkey and the Seychelles with 10%)
     • Under the Mixed Member Proportional electoral system, which party is the first to receive “top up” seats from the available pool of extra seats? The party with the second most amount of representation in the legislature