Additional Member System As an Alternative to Women's Reservation (Report‪)‬

Electoral systems do have an impact on the quality of representative democracy. Different electoral laws produce different results and different types of representatives also. The electoral system also does have an impact on the nature and extent of voting behaviour. In this context, the present paper looks into the question whether the 'first-past-the-post' (FPTP) system in India is truly representative and examines whether alternative models are available which can make our democracy more representative and meaningful. We may begin by distinguishing electoral laws from other kinds of law. If we agree that 'laws' generally are authoritative rules of conduct enacted and enforced by the holders of governmental authority, then 'election laws' are those authoritative rules which pertain to the conduct of laws. "Electoral laws are those which govern the processes by which electoral preferences are articulated as votes and by which these votes are translated into distributions of governmental authority (typically parliamentary seats) among the competing political parties" (Rae 1967:14). A number of concomitant questions are then asked with regard to the electoral laws. Are the voters asked to choose between men or parties? Does the candidate or party with more votes than any other win outright or is the victory divided among the contestants in proportion to their vote? Does the voter express a nominal preference or is he asked to rank his preferences among a number of alternatives? Does each constituency choose a single legislator, or does it select a number of them?