AN OUTLINE OF THE MAJORITY VOTE SYSTEM AND THE SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

The democratic quality of a political system is brought about through elections. Every modern state needs a representative body of the people. Therefore are elections for every democratic political system of fundamental significance. There are almost as many electoral systems as countries in which elections are hold – but every system can be divided into one of the two main electoral systems. The purpose of this essay is to describe these main electoral systems, the majority vote system and the system of proportional representation briefly and to demonstrate that both have their advantages and disadvantages. But we want to point out that the system of proportional representation may be considered as the more democratic one.

In the majority vote system (or first past the post system) the candidate who can secure a majority of votes gets the seat in the parliament. The votes for the inferior candidate are not taken into account. The country is divided into constituencies. Every cons...