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(U.K., France and others) to ensure that their party could win a few mandates in a

situation where government and opposition party have almost the same strength.

The trick herein is the following: if there is a constituency with a solid majority for thegovernment party, subtract a few towns voting overwhelmingly for the government and

add them to a neighboring constituency where the government party just needs a few

 percents more of the votes to win the election and exchange these towns for a few townsknown to be voting for the opposition - so the government's party will win both seats.

In principle, this kind of manipulation is just as much electoral fraud as counting

some votes twice or having some votes uncounted. The problem is: the existing old borders of a constituency might have been created by the same kind of manipulation by a

former government and it is almost impossible to find a really neutral solution.

• While the majority election system seems to be straightforward and simple at first 

 glance, it leads to rather complex decisions that are not transparent to voters. This is

definitely not a basis to create trust in democracy. 

Proportional Representation System

With the proportional representation system several members of parliament are to be elected per constituency. Basically every political party presents a list of candidates and voters can select alist, that is they vote for a political party. Parties are assigned parliamentary seats proportionally

to the number of votes they get.

Basic Idea

Political parties play a key role in creating political solutions (even in a majority election

system). A reasonable number of competing parties will create more and better ideas while just two big parties (resulting from the majority election system) tend to be at a deadlock with

inflexible positions.

Characteristics, Pros and Cons

• With several parties there is more choice and voters are more likely to find a party

that does represent their major political convictions than would be possible in a two-

 party system.

• Supporters of a small party are likely to be represented by at least one member of  parliament rooted in their region and sharing their political views and convictions.

•

The size of constituencies is bigger and there are less possibilities to manipulate their  borders than with the majority election system. Usually the borders of the constituenciesare fixed by historical considerations (provinces, federal states, counties etc.). As several

seats are assigned to parties proportionally to votes even within a constituency, the

 borders of a constituency are not as relevant to the election result as in a majority electionsystem.

• With an increased number of represented parties a majority for a single party becomes

less probable. If the government must be based on too many small parties they may

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disagree when new issues emerge. This may become a danger to political stability and

cause anticipated elections absorbing the attention of politicians. If instability gets

notorious in a country, the state as a whole will just not be able to perform the tasks itshould.

• Small parties may also abuse their position to get support for special interests (for 

examples subsidies for institutions related to the party) in exchange for support for thegovernment policy. This is nothing less than a form of corruption.

• In most countries with proportional elections the parties decide who will represent them

in parliament. There may be a difference between the party hierarchy deciding on the top places on the party's list of candidates and the voters preferences.

In some countries, there are additional rules to make sure that voters may have some

influence which candidates will represent them.

The most sophisticated system of this kind has been established in Switzerland: Votersmay replace candidates on a party list by other candidates (even from a different party)

and favorited candidates may appear twice on a list (while the total number of candidates

on a list may not exceed the number of seats, of course). For those who think this is too

complicated for them there is always the possibility to use an unchanged party list. Thisway, a major drawback of the proportional election system is eliminated while preserving

the obvious advantages of proportional representation. (For details see: Switzerland'srefined proportional election system)