Reference has already been made to the influence that the electoral system has on the type of electoral administration. Operations such as assuring a periodic update of the voter list, the planning of the human resources and materials required, the budget available to defray the expenses of costly processes and the public aid granted to the parties, etc., obviously require resources that will differ, depending on how regularly held and how many are anticipated.
Parliamentarian systems characteristically need an effective, flexible electoral administration, able to organise electoral processes within very tight deadlines, because starting dates are not pre-set.
From a more general point of view, the electoral system can be defined as the set of elements of the electoral regulations that have a direct influence on the conversion of votes into representative seats. Thus it is the basic lines of mediation that all electoral laws apply between votes and representation, integrating the core decisions that all legislators must adopt when it comes to drafting an electoral law (see Administrative Considerations).
Taking this dual quality as a starting point (influence on the conversion of votes into seats and the field of political decision-making), the following can today be considered to be elements of the electoral system:
- The constituency, taken to be the geographical conversion unit of the votes into seats;
- The electoral formula, or mathematical conversion procedure of the votes into seats;
- Whether or not provision will be made for an electoral barrier, that is to say, a certain minimum percentage of votes for candidacies to be able to participate in the counting of seats, whether it is in the first round or the second;
- Finally, the form of expression of the vote, which refers to the capacity of the voter and in a correlative manner, the capacity of the parties or political groups that sponsor candidacies, to determine which persons in particular will hold the offices being disputed.
