Tag: voting

Voting refers to the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representatives by voting.

The procedure for identifying the winners based on votes varies depending on both the country and the political office. Political scientists call these procedures electoral systems, while mathematicians and economists call them social choice rules. The study of these rules and what makes them good or bad is the subject of a branch of welfare economics known as social choice theory.

In smaller organizations, voting can occur in many different ways: formally via ballot to elect others for example within a workplace, to elect members of political associations, or to choose roles for others; or informally with a spoken agreement or a gesture like a raised hand. In larger organizations, like countries, voting is generally confined to periodic elections.