Country Election Report. The United States Election System

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The United States Election System
Election Systems, or the method in which votes cast in an election translate into seats in the legislature, are significant because they affect key governance dynamics and dimensions. Election systems offer different types of incentives to entreat voters so as to yield political payoffs. In the United States, the election system practiced is called the Plurality election system. Alternatively known as “winner-take-all” or “first-past-the-post,” the Plurality election system simply awards a seat to the nominee who gets a majority of votes in an election (Wright, 155-175). The candidate need not receive 50%+ of total votes to win; as long as the candidate has a superior number of votes, she or he is announced as the winner. Plurality systems typically rely on single-member constituencies, and permit voters to indicate only a single vote on their ballot (by making an X, punching a hole in the ballot, pulling a single lever, et. cetera.) plurality election systems also encourage the advancement of fairly stable political systems ruled by two main parties (a phenomenon identified as “Duverger’s Law”) (Riker, 753-766).
Under this system, an area is separated into several voting districts which are defined geographically and are each represented by an elected official. Voters cast one vote for their district representative and the individual who gets the highest total votes wins the election, even if she or he has received less than half of the votes (Steven, 173-236). The plurality election system, though, fails to represent the concerns of most (or even all) voters. Actually, because a candidate only needs to receive a plurality of votes to be declared the winner, most voters may have actually voted against the declared winner (however, their votes are divided among several candidates) (Jose et. al. 44-57). Elections for the House and Senate in the United States use the plurality system; furthermore, the United States presidential election is also a plurality system.
Candidate of the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump, won the seat because of plurality voting. He did so because plurality deprives voters the chance ...