Proportional Representation
From Wikinfo
Proportional Representation describes various methodologies used to ensure that an electoral system accurately reflects in the proportional support gained by groups in electoral contests to public office. In practice this usually involves ensuring that political parties in parliament or legislative assemblies received the number of seats proportional to the percentage of vote they received.1
Some election systems that strive to achieve proportional representation include the single transferable vote (STV) and the party-list proportional representation systems. Some systems, such as the single non-transferable vote and cumulative voting might qualify as semi-proportional. Systems that do not result in proportional representation are known as majoritarian systems. These include the first-past-the-post electoral system, the alternative vote, and the bloc vote, in which parties can receive seat numbers that bare no relationship to the national percentages they received in parliament.
The district magnitude of a system (i.e., the number of seats in a constituency) plays a vital role in determining how proportional it can be. When using proportional systems, the greater the number of seats in a district or constituency, the more proportional an electoral system can become. Any system with single-member districts is by necessity majoritarian at district or constituency level. However, district or constituency borders may be gerrymandered to create "majority-minority" districts or constituencies where a group of voters in the minority system-wide form the majority in a particular district or constituency, thus allowing a simulation of proportionality system-wide.
However, multiple-member districts do not ensure that a system will be proportional. The bloc vote can result in "super-majoritarian" results in which, in addition to the normal disproportionality of single-member majoritarian systems, geographical variations that could create majority-minority districts become subsumed into the larger districts.
Many elections across the world, at all levels of government, utilise proportional representation systems.
Footnote
1 Many systems may add in additional features to ensure absolutely accurate representation, based on gender, orientation, race, etc. These however are additional features and not strictly part of proportional representation but native variants of it.
External Resources
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Proportional Representation" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_Representation August 22, 2003
