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AES Notebook Two-Round SystemThe
final type of plurality-majority system used for parliamentary elections
is the Two-Round System (TRS), also known as the run-off or double-ballot
system. Each name indicates the central feature of the system: that it is
not one election, but takes place in two rounds, often a week or a
fortnight apart. The first round is conducted in the same way as a normal
First Past the Post (FPTP) election. If a candidate receives an absolute
majority of the vote, then they are elected outright, with no need for a
second ballot. If, however, no candidate receives an absolute majority,
then a second round of voting is conducted, and the winner of this round
is declared elected. The
details of how the second round is conducted vary in practice from state
to state. The most common method, as used in the Ukraine, is for the
second round of voting to be a straight "run-off" contest
between the two highest vote-winners from the first round; this is called
a majority-runoff system. It produces a result that is truly majoritarian,
in that one of the two candidates will necessarily achieve an absolute
majority of votes and be declared the winner. A variant on this procedure
is used for legislative elections in France, the country most often
associated with the TRS. For these elections, any candidate who has
received the votes of over 12.5% of the registered electorate in the first
round can stand in the second round. Whoever wins the highest numbers of
votes in the second round is then declared elected, regardless of whether
they have won an absolute majority or not. Unlike straight
majority-runoff, this system is not truly majoritarian, as there may be up
to five or six candidates contesting the second round of elections. We
therefore refer to it as a majority-plurality variant of the TRS. Two-Round
Systems are used to elect over thirty national parliaments and are an even
more common method for electing presidents. Along with France, many of the
other independent nations, which use TRS, are territorial dependencies of
the French Republic, or have been historically influenced in some way by
the French. In francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, the Central African
Republic, Mali, Togo, Chad, Gabon, Mauritania, and the Congo, and in North
Africa, Egypt use the system. Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Kiribati and the Comoros
Islands also use Two-Round Systems for their legislative elections, as do
the post-Soviet bloc states of Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova,
Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Unsurprisingly, in Western Europe,
France is joined by Monaco in using TRS. Albania and Lithuania run TRS
elections alongside List PR elections as part of their parallel systems,
while Hungary uses TRS to decide the results of the majoritarian district
electoral component of its Mixed Member Proportional PR system. |
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