History and use of electoral systems

An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Elections and referendums have been organized by governments, business, non-profit organisations and informal organisations. There are many variations in electoral systems, with the most common systems being first-past-the-post voting, the two-round (runoff) system and proportional representation.

The study of electoral methods is called social choice theory or voting theory, and this study can take place within the field of political science, economics, or mathematics, and specifically within the subfields of game theory and mechanism design.

Timeline

A chronological list of discovery, invention, development, description, or first known adoption and major use of electoral systems.

Antiquity

• c. 5th century BCE - Direct democracy in ancient Greece. Ostracism by plurality vote in Athens. A early version of score voting in ancient Sparta, by measuring how loudly the crowd shouted for different candidates.

Medieval era

• 1201–1300 – Venice adopts approval voting (unlimited voting) to elect their Great Council.
• 1299 – Ramon Llull devised the earliest known Condorcet method (equivalent to Copeland's method in cases with no pairwise ties) and the Borda count. The manuscripts in which he described these methods had been lost to history until they were rediscovered in 2001.
• 1401–1464 – Nicholas of Cusa independently discovers the Borda count.

Modern era

18th century

• 1770 – Jean-Charles de Borda first proposes the Borda count.
• 1788 – Condorcet first describes instant-runoff voting (IRV).
• 1792 – Future U.S. president Thomas Jefferson invents the D’Hondt method (Jefferson’s method).
• 1793 – Condorcet invents Bucklin voting.

19th century

• 1819 – The Single Transferable Vote invented by Thomas Wright Hill.
• 1832 – The Webster method, also called the Sainte-Laguë method described by Daniel Webster.
• 1868 – Droop quota described by Henry Richmond Droop.
• 1870 – Cumulative voting is used to elect the Illinois House of Representatives.
• 1876 – Dodgsons method described by Charles L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) who also independently discovered the Borda count.
• 1878 – D'Hondt method re-invented independently by Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt.
• 1880 – Gregory method invented.
• 1882 – Nanson's method first described.
• 1884 – A form of Liquid democracy is first described by Charles L. Dodgson.
• 1892 – Contingent vote used to elect the Legislative Assembly of Queensland.
• 1895 – Proportional approval voting invented.
• 1899 – Phragmen's voting rules published.
• 1899 – Sequential proportional approval voting first described.

20th century

• 1912 – Interactive representation first proposed.
• 1919 – Preferential block voting (multiple transferable vote) used in Australia.
• 1923 – Majority bonus (majority jackpot) implemented in Italy under Benito Mussolini.
• 1949 – Mixed-member proportional representation implemented in West-Germany.
• 1959 – Kemeny–Young method developed by John Kemeny.
• 1977 – Random dictatorship first described by Allan Gibbard.
• 1987 – Ranked pairs (RP) or the Tideman method invented by Nicolaus Tideman.
• 1989 – Binomial voting introduced in Chile.
• 1989 – Combined approval voting originally proposed by Dan Felsenthal.
• 1990 – Positive vote transfer system using a mixed single vote implemented in Hungary.
• 1993 – Negative vote transfer system (scorporo) implemented in Italy.
• 1998 – Alternative vote plus (AV+) proposed by the Jenkins Commission in the UK.
• 1997 – Schulze method developed by Markus Schulze.

21st century

• 2003 – Fair majority voting (a type of biproportional apportionment) first described.
• 2007 – Majority Judgement is invented by Balinski&Laraki.
• 2008 – Wright system first described.
• 2010 – Satisfaction Approval voting invented.
• 2013 – Dual-member proportional representation (DMP) invented.
• 2014 – STAR voting first described.
• 2016 – Rural–urban proportional representation (RUP) first proposed in Canada.
• 2017 – The Method of Equal Shares, a proportional method of participatory budgeting invented.
• 2019 – Usual Judgement invented.

History and use of major systems

Majority voting

Instant-runoff voting

Main articles: History and use of instant-runoff voting and History and use of instant-runoff voting in the United States

Proportional and semi-proportional systems

Single transferable vote

Main article: History and use of the single transferable vote

Historically, the single transferable vote (STV) was the first electoral system designed to achieve proportional representation.

It has seen a series of relatively modest periods of usage and disusage throughout the world; however, today it is seeing increasing popularity among proponents of electoral reform as a method of proportional or semi-proportional representation. This is especially prominent in the English speaking world, where reformers advocate for STV due to its similarity to FPTP in that voters primarily vote for candidates, not party-lists. By contrast, countries which developed or reformed their electoral systems later, without the long-lasting tradition of plurality or majoritarian voting (often implemented before modern party systems), list PR was more likely to be adopted.

STV has been used in many different local, regional and national electoral systems, as well as in various other types of bodies, around the world, notably in Australia, Ireland and Malta.

List PR

Party-list PR is the newer and by far the most common version of proportional representation, although it is relatively less common in English speaking world, where majoritarian representation via first-past-the-post is still often dominant. The historical reason for the is the Westminster system of government and it's influence among former colonies of the United Kingdom.

Electoral reform in list PR systems often focuses on implementing open lists, instead of closed lists, giving voters more control on which candidates get elected. However, there are parties which promote majoritarian systems for various reasons, ranging from simplicity, governability, and personalised representation. An example is the Dutch Democrats 66 party. Others campaign for the opposite, increasing proportionality by larger constituencies (sometimes a single, national constituency) and abolishment of electoral thresholds.

Use by country

Main article: List of electoral systems by country

References

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