Election

An election is a process by which people within a group or jurisdiction freely choose candidates to hold office. Elected officials are most commonly associated with various levels of government, but other organizations, such as churches and judiciaries, may also hold elections to fill particular roles. Free and fair elections are a hallmark of the democratic system of government, in which the citizens of a nation vote on decisions directly or elect representatives to govern for them.

Formal government election processes are generally thought to have first appeared in an early form in ancient Greece during the sixth century BCE. The democracy that eventually developed in Athens invited citizens of the city to elect individuals to numerous government bodies. The electoral process associated with democracy evolved over the next several thousand years. In medieval Europe, elections were held for clerical leaders, local government officials, and sometimes even monarchs.

In the late 1700s, the newly founded United States pioneered constitutional democracy when the Founding Fathers included the right to vote in the national constitution. In the twenty-first century, the majority of countries around the world are democracies that allow their citizens to participate in elections. However, even many democratic nations have faced criticism of their electoral systems, including concerns over fairness and effectiveness, and electoral reform is a common political issue.

History

Historians usually name ancient Greece as the place where the democratic form of government was first developed and enacted. Around 507 BCE, the Athenian legal reformer Cleisthenes reworked Athens' laws to make them fairer. The system of government he devised was known as demokratia, meaning "people-power." One of the defining attributes of this Athenian democracy was the ability of a portion of the people to elect their government leaders freely. Before Cleisthenes's reforms, making decisions for Athens had been left entirely to the aristocratic class.

Cleisthenes had intended his new election process to be fair and equal, but in reality, the institution remained exclusionary. For example, only male Athenian citizens older than eighteen could vote in elections. Individuals earned Athenian citizenship if their parents had also been citizens of the city. Although women were also considered citizens, they could not vote. Foreigners and slaves were also prohibited from voting. This meant that, after Cleisthenes's reforms, less than half of the total population of Athens could vote for their leaders in a given election. Aristocratic rule eventually returned to ancient Greece, but the primitive democracy that had developed there passed into later generations.

Even in medieval Europe, a time and place where society was strictly divided into classes, the general populations of some kingdoms participated in elections. People voted for both government leaders and church leaders, including the positions of local councillors, mayors, members of parliament, abbots, and bishops. Cardinals voted democratically for popes to lead the Roman Catholic Church, and even the monarchs of some European kingdoms were chosen by special electors. Similar to Athenian democracy, however, the right to become an elector and vote for monarchs was reserved only for a portion of the population, namely property-owning men. Women, children, foreigners, members of the clergy, and the poor were all excluded from voting.

Elections in some countries during the medieval era could also be rigidly complex. In the Italian city of Florence in the 1200s, individuals had to possess the necessary skills—such as skills in chemistry or medicine—to join a trade guild before they would be able to vote for local leaders. This voting was done not by simple majority, but by an intricate process designed to satisfy all the guild members. Opposing political groups chose individuals from rival organizations. These individuals selected electors that all groups could approve. The electors then voted for a candidate or on the issue at hand. In this way, the different factions were assured that the electors had their particular interests in mind when they voted.

The institution of free elections changed with the development of liberal democracy during the Enlightenment era in the 1600s and 1700s. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in which philosophers and other thinkers viewed individual liberties and free, open governments as superior to the absolute monarchies of the past. Liberal democracies are governments that are controlled by the people through fair and free elections.

This idea greatly influenced the Founders of the United States in the late 1700s, when they were planning to break away from Great Britain and form their own government. The United States ultimately fashioned itself as a liberal democracy by the laws of the US Constitution. American citizens would be able to vote, but not directly on most decisions of government. Instead, the people would freely elect representatives to govern for them. This is called a representative democracy. The American model proved highly influential, and democratic elections spread to many countries over the following centuries.

As in earlier electoral systems, many liberal democracies initially restricted voting rights to men (and often imposed additional limitations based on factors such as race and property, as well). By the late nineteenth century, however, there began to be gradual momentum toward universal suffrage. Women gained the right to vote in many countries in the early twentieth century. While many countries also officially removed racial voting restrictions, significant barriers often remained in practice, which led to a swell of civil rights movements from the mid-twentieth century on.

Overview

Elections can take numerous forms. Even in the context of democratic government at the national level, there is much variability in details between countries. For example, an electoral system may be based on majoritarian (or winner-take-all) representation, proportional representation, or some mixture of the two. However, there also tend to be many common features across democratic nations, such as the widespread use of a secret ballot to protect privacy and prevent voter intimidation and corruption.

Electing candidates to public office in the United States typically involves several steps, although the details can vary depending on the position or between states. The process usually begins with primary elections, in which individuals from the same political party compete to become their party's nominee for a certain position. The nominees from each party then campaign until the day of the election, when one of them is voted into office. The American people do not directly vote for the president of the United States, however. They technically vote for electors of the Electoral College, who have pledged to vote for certain candidates. The candidate who receives the majority of these electoral votes wins the presidency.

Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, are parliamentary democracies. These forms of government often feature bicameral parliaments, or legislative bodies with two chambers, the members of which are freely chosen by the people in formal elections. The individual head of the political party with the most seats in parliament after the elections becomes the country's prime minister or chancellor.

While most countries hold some form of elections—and many of these are influenced by either US-style or parliamentary-style democracy—not all electoral systems are considered free and fair by outside observers. For example, a dictatorship might hold a "sham election" to give the appearance of public support for the regime. The results may be completely fabricated, or reflect unfair voting rules such as voter suppression and persecution of opposition candidates. Elections are also considered unfair if the voting population is deeply uninformed due to a lack of general freedoms, such as free speech and freedom of the press.

Bibliography

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