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 and , 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.

Using election returns from all 3,100 countries in the US for 14 presidential elections, investigation was made into the utility of election forecasting & election prediction based on so-called "bellwether" electoral districts. A series of historical experiments employing the extensive data base shows: (1) the predictive records of historical bellwethers are often no better than the predictive record of a randomly selected county, & (2) some counties are more likely to parallel national electoral shifts, but not so accurately as to be predictively useful. 3 types of possible bellwether districts are considered: all-or-nothing, barometric, & swingometric. The findings & the method have interest to students of electoral behavior, election forecasting, & research methodology as well as to journalists who conduct nonrandom surveys of retrospective bellwether counties in election years. 7 Tables, 3 Figures. AA.

A study of institutional transformation and changing public and political attitudes toward the redistribution of electoral constituencies in Canada.

This study attempts to reveal the impact of distribution inequality of electoral districts on the election outcomes in Jordan. Since 1993 elections, electoral laws and regulations have been adopted that underestimate population density in Jordan, meaning that some regions with lower population densities have obtained more parliamentary seats than regions with high population density, including the governorates of Amman, Irbid and Zarqa. Successive Jordanian governments' strategies have intentionally ignored electoral geography, which reduces the chances of mainly the Palestinian component obtaining significant numbers of seats in the Parliament. Governments have also sought to mitigate the chances of Islamic, Leftist and Nationalist parties obtaining a majority of seats in the Parliament, and thus being able to exert effective pressure to hold the executive authority accountable and responsible for its actions. In addition, low levels of confidence of most Jordanian citizens in Parliament have resulted in a lack of true desire to vote, which has led to an increase in the percentage of wasted votes compared with the cast votes. The study concludes that the executive authority's domination in drawing and dividing electoral districts as part of its hegemony and control over the general policy of elections has purposefully neglected population density and geographical criteria. In light of the study results, an urgent need arises to endorse an election law that accomplishes the standards of distributive justice, maximizes the role of supportive and opposition parties, raises citizen confidence in Parliaments, reduces the percentage of wasted votes and finally activates a truly representative Parliament.

AbstractIn 2015, Chile fundamentally reformed the electoral system it had used since 1989. The old system was characterized by high levels of malapportionment, or differences across districts in the ratios of voters to representatives. In the first elections after redemocratization, malapportionment favored the ideological right, but elections since 2000 have yielded no evidence that malapportionment produced ideological bias. The new, postreform electoral system reduces malapportionment in the lower chamber, although it remains pronounced in both chambers. Nevertheless, analysis of results from previous elections, coupled with information about the new districts, suggests that, consistent with recent experience, malapportionment will not produce ideological bias in elections to either chamber.