Electoral reform is change in electoral systems to improve how public desires are expressed in election results. That can include reforms of:
- Voting systems, such as proportional representation, a two-round system (runoff voting), instant-runoff voting, Instant Round Robin Voting called Condorcet Voting, approval voting, citizen initiatives and referendums and recall elections.
- Vote-counting procedures
- Rules about political parties, typically changes to election laws
- Eligibility to vote
- How candidates and political parties are able to stand (nomination rules) and how they are able to get their names onto ballots (ballot access)
- Electoral constituencies and election district borders
- Ballot design and voting equipment
- Scrutineering (election monitoring by candidates, political parties, etc.)
- Safety of voters and election workers
- Measures against bribery, coercion, and conflicts of interest
- Financing of candidates' and referendum campaigns
- Factors which affect the rate of voter participation (voter turnout)
Read more about Electoral Reform: Continuous Change, Nation-building, Role of United Nations, Electoral Borders, National Reforms
Famous quotes containing the words electoral and/or reform:
“Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“The prostitute is the scapegoat for everyone’s sins, and few people care whether she is justly treated or not. Good people have spent thousands of pounds in efforts to reform her, poets have written about her, essayists and orators have made her the subject of some of their most striking rhetoric; perhaps no class of people has been so much abused, and alternatively sentimentalized over as prostitutes have been but one thing they have never yet had, and that is simple legal justice.”
—Alison Neilans. “Justice for the Prostitute—Lady Astor’s Bill,” Equal Rights (September 19, 1925)