Voting

Clockwise from top left: ballot for a referendum in Panama, ballot box for a French election, women voting in Bangladesh, an electronic voting machine in Brazil, a sign at a United States voting location, election inking on a man's finger in Afghanistan

Part of the Politics series
Voting
Balloting Ballots Absentee ballot Provisional ballot Sample ballot Candidates and Ballot measures Write-in candidate Electorate Slate Ticket Collection Ballot box Compulsory voting Early voting Electronic voting Open ballot Polling place Postal voting Precinct Vote center Voting booth Counting Popular vote Tally Voting machine
Electoral systems Plurality and majoritarian systems First-past-the-post voting Two-round system Instant-runoff voting Plurality-at-large voting General ticket Usual judgment Proportional and semi-proportional systems Single non-transferable vote Cumulative voting Binomial system Party-list Single transferable voting Spare vote Mixed-member systems Mixed-member proportional Additional member system Mixed single vote (positive vote transfer) Scorporo (negative vote transfer) Mixed ballot transferable vote Alternative Vote Plus Dual-member proportional Rural–urban proportional Majority bonus system Parallel voting (Mixed member majoritarian)
Voting strategies Issue voting Fusion voting Split-ticket voting Straight-ticket voting Tactical voting Vote pairing Protest votes Abstention Donkey vote Election boycott None of the above Refused ballot Spoilt vote
Voting patterns and effects Coattail effect Voting advice application Likely voter Paradox of voting Passive electioneering Vote splitting Political apathy Voter fatigue Voter turnout Protest votes
Electoral fraud and prevention Ballot harvesting Ballot stuffing Voter intimidation Vote buying Voter suppression Voter caging Prevention Election ink Secret ballot Voter registration End-to-end verifiable voting
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A joint Politics and Economics series
Social choice and electoral systems
Social choice Mechanism design Comparative politics Comparison List (By country)
Single-winner methods Single vote - plurality methods First preference plurality (FPP) Two-round (US: Jungle primary) Partisan primary Instant-runoff UK: Alternative vote (AV) US: Ranked-choice (RCV) Condorcet methods Condorcet-IRV Round-robin voting Minimax Schulze Ranked pairs Maximal lottery Positional voting Plurality (el. IRV) Borda count (el. Baldwin) Antiplurality (el. Coombs) Cardinal voting Score voting Approval voting Majority judgment STAR voting
Proportional representation Party-list Apportionment Highest averages Largest remainders National remnant Biproportional List type Closed list Open list Panachage List-free PR Localized list Quota-remainder methods Hare STV Schulze STV CPO-STV Quota Borda Approval-based committees Thiele's method Phragmen's method Expanding approvals rule Method of equal shares Fractional social choice Direct representation Interactive representation Liquid democracy Fractional approval voting Maximal lottery Random ballot Semi-proportional representation Cumulative SNTV Limited voting
Mixed systems By results of combination Mixed-member majoritarian Mixed-member proportional By mechanism of combination Non-compensatory Parallel (superposition) Coexistence Conditional Fusion (majority bonus) Compensatory Seat linkage system UK: 'AMS' NZ: 'MMP' Vote linkage system Negative vote transfer Mixed ballot Supermixed systems Dual-member proportional Rural–urban proportional Majority jackpot By ballot type Single vote Double simultaneous vote Dual-vote
Paradoxes and pathologies Spoiler effects Spoiler effect Cloning paradox Frustrated majorities paradox Center squeeze Pathological response Perverse response Best-is-worst paradox No-show paradox Multiple districts paradox Strategic voting Lesser evil voting Exaggeration Truncation Turkey-raising Paradoxes of majority rule Tyranny of the majority Discursive dilemma Conflicting majorities paradox
Social and collective choice Impossibility theorems Arrow's theorem Majority impossibility Moulin's impossibility theorem McKelvey–Schofield chaos theorem Gibbard's theorem Positive results Median voter theorem Condorcet's jury theorem May's theorem Condorcet dominance theorems Harsanyi's utilitarian theorem
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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.