Electoral Laws and Systems

Abstract

‘Electoral laws’, ‘electoral systems’, and ‘electoral formulas’ are often used as synonyms without clear distinctions. In the terminology used by several authors, an electoral law consists of suffrage and its limitations. For other authors, such as D. W. Rae, an electoral law is instead defined by the structure of the ballot, the magnitude of the constituency, and the electoral formula (usually referred to as the electoral system elsewhere in the literature).