Beyond proportionality, there are other ways of thinking about how electoral systems behave. One way is to assess what degree of choice on the ballot paper is given to a voter under each system. This gives us a very different way of illustrating the differences between electoral system types.
Ballots may be categorical or ordinal in structure, and they can be centred on candidates, on parties, or allow the voter to express a choice between both candidates and parties. Categorical ballots compel the voter to choose one candidate or party, while ordinal ballots allow the voter to express a more sophisticated range of choice.
As Figure Three shows, some electoral systems give an ordinal choice within a candidate-centred ballot. For example, preferential voting systems such as the Alternative Vote (AV) and the Single Transferable Vote (STV), see Alternative Vote and Single Transferable Vote, do this by allowing the voter to rank-order all candidates with numbers. Similarly, the Block Vote, see Block Vote, the Two-Round System (TRS), see Two-Round System, and some forms of List PR, see Open, Closed and Free Lists allow the voter to split his or her vote between the candidates of different parties, either via a second round of voting (TRS), having multiple votes to distribute (Block Vote) or via a candidate choice outside the particular PR party list (in 'free list' PR systems).
Finally, some electoral systems can offer a choice of both an ordinal and a categorical ballot. Since 1984 the STV ballot for the Australian Senate has included a 'party ticket' box which, when chosen, means that the ballot is treated as though the voter had numerically listed all candidates in the order that their favoured party had chosen.
| Figure Three : Electoral System Ballot Choice |
| |
Candidate |
Party |
Both |
| Categorical |
FPTP (Canada)
SNTV (Jordan)
List PR-Open (Finland)
|
Party Block (Singapore)
List PR - Closed (Namibia)
|
Parallel (Japan)
List PR - Open (Denmark)
MMP (Germany)
|
| Ordinal |
AV (Australia)
TRS (France)
Block Vote (Maldives)
STV (Ireland)
|
TRS (Mali)
|
TRS (Ukraine)
List PR - Panachage (Switzerland)
|
| Either |
|
|
STV (Australian Senate)
|
NB: examples in brackets are representative case studies which illustrate how different systems might be categorized together under this logic.
© International IDEA
While ordinal ballots clearly allow voters a greater degree of choice, categorical ballots are more common; indeed, over three-quarters of all the electoral systems analysed in 'The International IDEA' handbook use them. Straight either/or choices between candidates are found in FPTP, SNTV, and the open List PR systems, while categorical choices between parties are inherent within closed List PR systems and the Party Block adaptation of the Block Vote system, see Block Vote. Electoral systems in which an elector has more than one vote, such as MMP, see Mixed Member Proportional or Parallel systems, see Parallel, also logically entail the ability to split votes between two parties. In these cases, however, the choice on each separate ballot is clearly a categorical one, although the overall effect of the two ballots is to create an ordinal choice.
See also Ballot Design
