A parliamentary vote is a formal decision-making process where members of deliberative assemblies – parliaments, legislative councils, and other elected bodies – give their opinions on proposals (formal proposal by a member that an assembly take a certain action). Parliamentary voting systems are the dominant form of democratic government in Europe, Oceania, and the former British Empire, and are also used by some local governments in Australia.
There are several different ways in which a parliamentary vote may be conducted, depending on the election system in use, and the number of people being elected. Generally speaking, a majority-voting system, such as first past the post, is used when elections are held for individual representatives. This system means that the candidate who receives the most votes is elected. In the case of a tie, a winner is chosen by the drawing of lots (methods involving chance such as tossing a coin or selecting names out of a hat).
Some countries use a proportional representation system, such as single-transferable vote (STV) or party-list proportional representation (PPR). In these systems, voters rank candidates in order of preference, and ‘surplus’ votes – those received higher than a quota of seats – are transferred to voters’ second and subsequent choices. This is repeated until a quota of seats is attained.
Other systems are hybrids between these two types – for example the mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system developed in West Germany after World War II. In MMP, some representatives are elected in single-member constituencies, while others are selected from party lists. In this case, the seats that parties win in constituencies are subtracted from their list allocations to ensure that overall delegations are proportional to the total number of votes cast for the party.