Suchergebnisse

The members of the Czech Senate, the upper chamber of the Czech Parliament, are elected every six years through a two-round majority system in 81 single-seat electoral districts, with one-third of the chamber up for election every two years. District boundaries are set by a law which stipulates they must be modified by amendment if the number of inhabitants in any district diverges more than 15% from the average. Recently, these changes have been carried out every two years shortly before the regular election is announced, and the number of districts affected by changes is gradually increasing. The extent of these changes, however, is usually very small, which makes later changes necessary. During last ten years, many districts have been changed more multiple times. It follows that the Samuels-Snyder index of malapportionment has increased from 0.0289 in 1996 to 0.0346 in 2010. Moreover, during the last electoral cycle, the 15% limit was not in fact observed in four of the 81 districts. Moreover, the criterion chosen for district size is not an optimal one, as it fails to take into account the uneven distribution of minors and foreigners, who do not have voting rights. In fact, the percentage of minors and foreigners in various districts varies in the interval <-2.3%; 2.8%> and <-2.8%; 6.8%>, respectively. This affects the weight of votes in various districts accordingly. Besides the problems with malapportionment, the law does not provide for any prevention of gerrymandering. Although there is no strong evidence of gerrymandering being used so far, at least one attempt in this respect was made in 2008. The article analyzes the law and its outcome and suggests some modifications to the law. Adapted from the source document.

Traditionally, political rights are an important component of the relationship between the state and its citizens, and therefore only citizens are entitled to bear them. Nevertheless, due to international migration this approach is subject to change and nowadays many countries give voting rights also to foreigners who are resident there. The attitude of the Czech Republic has so far been conservative, which means that only the minimum standard enacted by European law is accommodated. However, preparatory work on a new electoral code has given rise to a discussion on the possible extension of voting rights also to foreigners from third countries resident in the country. This article tries to enhance the discussion in three ways. The first part consists of an analysis of what the potential percentage of foreign voters is, taking into consideration their geographic distribution in particular municipalities and thus providing an estimate of their influence on local councils. According to the results, potential foreign voters form a relevant minority only in 11 out of 6251 municipalities. The second part is focused on the actual exercise of voting rights by European citizens resident in the Czech Republic, who have it already. A representative survey conducted on a sample of 5% of municipalities shows that the turnout of these voters is negligible (approx. 2.4%), far below the EU average. The last part of the article deals with the legislation in this area which causes crucial obstacles to the real exercise of political rights by foreigners, and therefore is incompatible with the European law. Adapted from the source document.

The level of political participation of American citizens is commonly considered to be high. However, voter turnout is in fact relatively low, even in highly attractive presidential elections. The article focuses on this phenomenon and the particular factors that, according to the literature, affect turnout negatively. The first part describes various methods being used to measure voter turnout in the USA. The difference can even be several percentage points, depending on the method of calculation. With regard to these distinctions, American data cannot be directly compared with voter turnout statistics in European countries that use a different methodology. The main part of the article analyses several factors that are generally considered to influence voter turnout in the USA negatively, and counts their real impact. One important factor is that voter registration methods can lower the turnout by up to 11 per cent. Also significant is the lowering of the voting-age limit in 1971. Neither gradual changes in population age structure nor enactment of election-day holidays have proven to negatively influence turnout. The principal findings reveal a permanent increase of inhabitants without voting rights (esp. non-citizens). These persons are included in voting-age population figures, and due to inexact methodology, cause a merely statistical decrease at the level of at least 3 per cent of voter turnout. Adapted from the source document.