Apportionment (politics)

Condorcet methods Positional voting Cardinal voting Quota-remainder methods Approval-based committees Fractional social choice Semi-proportional representation By ballot type Pathological response Strategic voting Paradoxes of majority rule Positive results Apportionment is the process by which seats in a legislative body are distributed among administrative divisions, such as states or parties, entitled to representation.

Fundamentally, the representation of a population in the thousands or millions by a reasonable size, thus accountable governing body involves arithmetic that will not be exact.

Conversely, a representative in the governing body may voice the opinions held by a voter who is not actually their constituent, though representatives usually seek to serve their own constituents first and will only voice the interests of an outside group of voters if it pertains to their district as well or is of national importance.

Moreover, most such systems impose a threshold that a party must reach (for example, some percentage of the total vote) to qualify to obtain representatives in the body which eliminates extreme parties, to make the governing body as orderly in non-proportionate systems.

With the minimum votes threshold version, if a subtype of single-issue politics based on a local issue exists, those parties or candidates distancing themselves from a broad swathe of electoral districts, such as marginal secessionists, or using a marginal minority language, may find themselves without representation.

Malapportionment may be deliberate, for reasons such as biasing representation toward geographic areas or a minority over equality of individuals.

Many instances worldwide arise in which large, sparsely populated rural regions are given equal representation to densely packed urban areas.

[a] Unequal representation can be measured in the following ways: Even when electoral districts have similar populations, legislators may draw the boundaries to pursue private agendas; see Gerrymandering.

The first is the impact of abstentions, in which a lower turnout in a constituency means fewer votes are needed to win there.