What is Voting: Definition and 54 Discussions

Voting is a method for a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, in order to make a collective decision or express an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high office by voting. Residents of a place represented by an elected official are called "constituents", and those constituents who cast a ballot for their chosen candidate are called "voters". There are different systems for collecting votes, but while many of the systems used in decision-making can also be used as electoral systems, any which cater for proportional representation can only be used in elections.
In smaller organizations, voting can occur in 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. Informally voting could occur as a spoken agreement or as a verbal gesture like a raised hand or electronically.

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  1. gentzen

    Make poll results visible, after voting is no longer possible

    The threads in 2022 PF Member Awards Archive are closed now, so voting is no longer possible. However, all polls where I didn't vote still show "Results are only viewable after voting." Here is my feature request: if voting on some poll is no longer possible (for whatever reason, but probably...
  2. jk22

    Government detects nonlocality via voting

    Suppose a system which looks at votation of each citizen, answers being yes/no coded as 1,-1. Since a lot of people vote it gives an average value that is encoded as an angle ##\theta##, the score 50/50 corresponding then to ##\pi/2## since the average with 1,-1 were 0...
  3. mark!

    Franchise and voting rights based on measured intellectual capacity?

    On Wikipedia, it says: "Eligibility - Some nations restrict the franchise based on measured intellectual capacity". I've been searching on Google for a pretty long time now, but I can't seem to find the answer to what I'm looking for. My only simply and short question is: Which nations? To...
  4. DennisN

    VOTE PF Favorite Movies Poll 2 - SF, Fantasy, Comedy & Western

    Hi, and welcome to the Physics Forums favorite movies poll 2! (the first poll is here) Rules and notes: Please vote here for your 5 favorite movies in the categories Science Fiction, Fantasy, Comedy & Western. Please note that this is a multiple votes poll, and that your votes should reflect...
  5. DennisN

    VOTE PF Favorite Movies Poll 1 - Drama, Thriller & Action

    Welcome to the Physics Forums favorite movies poll 1! (the second poll is here) Rules and notes: Please vote here for your 5 favorite movies in the categories Drama, Thriller & Action. Please note that this is a multiple votes poll, and that your votes should reflect the movies you like the...
  6. M

    MHB Probability : Voting problem - Game strategy

    Hey! :o I am looking the following: There are 1 Million voters. 2000 of them know exactly that they will vote for A, but the other 998000 will decide if whether they will vote for A or B in the voting booth using a coin. With which possibility will A get more votes? At a quiz we get...
  7. jedishrfu

    B Instant Runoff Voting and How Safe Movies Win

    There are many ways to tally voting, one such scheme is Instant Runoff Voting where you are allowed to choose your top 3 favorites. However, this scheme can lead to mediocre choices when applied to Academy Award movie wins:
  8. Ygggdrasil

    Vote for the Breakthrough of the Year

    [Edit, Dec 22] Science selected cosmic convergence (observation of the collision of two neutron stars) as their Breakthrough of the Year. The winner of the people's choice was gene therapy success (successful clinical trial of using gene therapy to treat childhood neuromuscular disease)...
  9. sunrah

    News BREXIT - more good than bad or more bad than good?

    I guess the question is moot, being that most things in politics are good for some and bad for others. Anyway, I'm still undecided. What do you think? And if you're not voting, why not? MOD NOTE: Threads in current events must be accompanied by a link to a news source...
  10. A

    Are Open Source Software and Compulsory Voting the Solution to Secure Elections?

    Why don't they mandate that all voting machines use open source software. They seem to use PC's presumedly with the windows OS. To me this is a perfect cheating machine. You give your vote to the programmer and then it is all up to him or her. There are no tests that can be...
  11. M

    MHB Electronic voting system

    Hey! :o I am reading about an electronic voting system from the book Cryptography:an Introduction, N.Smart and I have some questions. The voting system will assume that we have $m$ voters, and that there are $n$ centres which perform the tallying. The use of a multitude of tallying centres is...
  12. B

    Why is the current voting system in the UK flawed and how can it be improved?

    Whenever I start discussing about this topic, I always get negative response and people say that I'm stupid for asking such a silly question. However, if you think logically, your vote has absolutely no impact on the results. Even if you manage to convince your family, friends and a hundred...
  13. N

    History Women & Voting: An American History Perspective

    I was watching Lincoln last night, and at a part were the idea of women voting was laughed at by the legislators. My mom's comment was along the lines of "Oh right, women weren't smart enough to vote back then." or something similar (and a sarcastic tone of course). My retort was that around...
  14. nomadreid

    Statistics of cumulative voting

    (Disclaimer: this is a mathematics question, not a social science question) It is not clear to me, given Arrow's impossibility theorem, why the most common forms of cumulative voting -- range, rank, and approval voting -- are advantageous over choice voting systems, such as elimination...
  15. C

    News Could Splitting Votes Lead to a More Accurate Election Outcome?

    Have anyone ever considered the following voting system. Each persion is allowed a TOTAL of one vote. But that one vote can be ''split'' between candidates. So a person can say, for example, that 1/2 of the vote goes to candidate 1, 1/4 goes to candidates 2 and 3, while candidate 4 doesn't get...
  16. E

    Remote Internet voting security flaw?

    Hi guys, Traditional voting via paper ballots at polling stations, meant that each individual was free to vote for his candidate in complete privacy. A father could vote for a separate candidate and a son for another candidate. So I was wondering is there any way in which to ensure similar...
  17. lpetrich

    News Alternatives to First-Past-The-Post Voting

    First-past-the-post or plurality voting is the dominant system in the US and in the UK's national government. You vote for one candidate, and the winner is whoever gets the largest fraction of the votes. While that is a simple system, and while it works well when there are only two candidates...
  18. A

    A zero knowledge system for voting?

    My memory on this is a bit foggy, but a couple of years ago one my math professors had a digression about a system of voting where no one would be able to know what anyone else voted. It involved the graph of a polynomial, and the kicker was that this system couldn't be implemented in society...
  19. Drakkith

    News Voting Proposition Help: Appraisal for Water Stewardship Land

    Hey all. Just got my ballot into vote on some propositions (I vote for Texas legislature) but I'm not sure what one of them really means. I know what an ad valorem tax is, but I have no idea what it means by the "on the basis of it's productive capacity" part. Is this land that's devoted to...
  20. cobalt124

    News U.K. Alternative Voting Referendum 5th May

    I haven't looked yet but I'd guess that the merits or otherwise of different voting systems has been done to death here. I'm wondering what U.K. members feel about this specific referendum, and also any thoughts from other members on Aletrnative Voting vs first past the post in general. This has...
  21. J

    News Should Organizations Encourage Informed Voting, Not just Voting?

    There are numerous organizations that encourage people (especially younger people who have recently attained majority), as if it is a service to the country. People who are politically informed are going to vote regardless, but would our society benefit from a mob of apathetic uninformed people...
  22. V

    News Voting in the British Election: Who and Why?

    If you're British, who/what party will you be voting for on the 6th May and why?
  23. cronxeh

    News Suggestion for a change in the voting process

    If you had an option to vote 'against' a candidate on the ballot, instead of voting for another candidate from the list, wouldn't that make it more accurate? Suppose I don't like Bush, but I don't want to vote for Kerry. I want to contribute to the process by voting against Bush, thus...
  24. Andre

    News Do British Voters Dismiss Human Impact on Global Warming?

    Despite extensive information efforts, the British have their own thoughts. Global warming is not our fault, say most voters in Times poll. What would that do to Kopenhagen?
  25. K

    Probability and Voting: Covariance of Republican and Democratic Votes

    Homework Statement In a town there are r+1 Republicans and d+1 Democrats. There is a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate, both of whom will vote for themselves. Aside from them, a Republican voter will vote for a Democrat with probability pRD and a Democrat will vote for a...
  26. J

    News Democracy can only work effectively if the people voting

    A democracy can only work effectively if the people voting have a clear view of what the politicians are doing. However, the problem arises when the information passes through the media. Most of the media in the UK, and all of the media in the US is not state-funded, so they inevitably do...
  27. E

    Waiting in Line to Vote: Is Online Voting Feasible?

    I just spent about an hour and a half waiting in line to early vote. Do you think online voting in U.S. elections is feasible? Or do you think the security risks are too great?
  28. A

    News Voting machine problems and voters being struck from the rolls

    I saw on the news (ABC & Fox) that voters in swing states are being struck from the rolls in some states - Mississippi - ~ 10,000 I'm not sure how true the report is but it is disturbing in a deja-vu kinda way. There are also problems with the machines in Fl. and some other states. Do any of you...
  29. F

    Engineering Multiplexer Voting Circuit - 74LS151

    Homework Statement LOGIC DESIGN USING MSI COMPONENTS A small corporation has 10 shares of stock, and each share entitles its owner to one vote at a stockholder’s meeting. The 10 shares of stock are owned by four people as follows: Mr.W; 1 share, Mr. X; 2 shares, Mr. Y; 3 shares, Mrs...
  30. edward

    News Ohio Voting Macines In The News Again

    It now appears that Ohio's voting machine count can be manipulated using only a PDA and a magnet. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=4008511
  31. matthyaouw

    News Voting system- voting against?

    I was thinking about elections today and wondering who I'd vote for, and I decided that if there was an election tomorrow I would have to not vote; I do not feel that I understand the issues or policies of the parties well enough to make an informed decision. This brings up a problem though- I...
  32. K

    News Voting for anyone but rather than just for

    Voting for "anyone but" rather than just "for" Would you think if would be fair if people were allowed the choice to vote for "anyone but" a particular person >>> in other words, subtracting a vote from a candidate so that all other candidates can catch up?
  33. Ivan Seeking

    News What will determine your voting decisions?

    Iraq, terrorism, scandal, economics, environmental issues, foreign policy... the party? As for me, for the first time I'll be voting the party [which I never understood until now]. Until those in power are dead or gone, I will never vote for another Republican at any level. At this point, I...
  34. Mk

    News Exploring the Impact of Voting in a Democracy

    What does voting mean to you? I think we all live in countries that are quite full-blooded democracies, if not what does it mean to you if you could?
  35. Moonbear

    News Should the voting age be raised?

    In the quest for something "different" on this forum, I'm posting a poll to ask whether the current voting age of 18 in the U.S. should be raised. The reason I ask is that I'm wondering if the majority of 18 year-olds in our current society (not the way the society was 20 or 50 or 100 years...
  36. P

    News Government Accountability Report on voting machines

    Released last friday: http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/GAOReport_ElectionSecurity_102105.pdf (don't be fooled by the link name, it's the real report.) This is being discussed all over the progressive websites. The GAO is non partisan, lending bipartisan support to concerns that (from the...
  37. Pengwuino

    Vote Yes on Proposition 77: Commercial So Amazing Even God Couldn't Dream It

    I have no idea what proposition 77 is but the hell if I am not voting for it. Why? This commercial. Greatest commercial ever. God himself could not have even dreamed up a commercial this perfect. Lets set the stage shall we... A Kid stands up, maybe 7 years old and says "We should be...
  38. S

    News If you vote your personal morals are you voting against personal freedom

    It is not a poll I would simply like some feedback from the community here. I was listening to the radio this morning and someone made this argument. (And I paraphrase) If you don't believe in the right to have a medically assisted suicide, then don't get one. However don't prevent me...
  39. H

    Voting on the Existence of God

    "...if god exist..." ... and in the spirit of all those replies... ... let us vote!...
  40. Mk

    Thread Rating Voting: Can Non-Mods Vote?

    One time I voted on a thread, I don't know how I did it, but I did. Is it that only super-mentors and moderators can vote on a thread? And it was a strange techical mistake that one time?
  41. Ivan Seeking

    News Some in U.S. voting with their feet

    http://iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/02/06/news/refuge.html
  42. russ_watters

    News Voting in Iraq: A Risky Choice for Baghdad Citizens

    Knowing the danger of terrorism, if you were an Iraqi living in Baghdad, would you vote in the upcoming election?
  43. M

    Why that guy is not on the voting list?

    Yeah, say i am nosy, but i do want to know: What is the hidden principle [at least from me] that the Vote-list "putter" follow in order to chose the names of the guys/girls there... was it on or more than one who chose the names... I said that before somewhere on General Discussion ,i...
  44. O

    News Secure US Voting: Integrity-Based System to End Fraud

    The solution for ending voting fraud could contain the same idea that we use when we use our debit cards that require a private code for the purchase to occur, along with a public list of the vote with a private number. Heres how it could work: To cast a vote, the voter must create a...
  45. Gokul43201

    News How was your voting experience ?

    How was your voting experience today ? Anything unusual ? Were there challengers at your polling place or any other irregularities that you noticed ?
  46. C

    News Why are you voting for John Kerry?

    I'd like to know why people here are voting for John Kerry this election. Try to list three reasons for it. I'm not going to criticize or start some flaming debate over the reasons. I just want to know your reasons.
  47. C

    News Why are you voting for George W Bush?

    I'd like to know why people here are voting for George W Bush this election. Try to list three reasons for it. I'm not going to criticize or start some flaming debate over the reasons. I just want to know your reasons.
  48. kat

    News Typically Dem voting populace: seismic shift

    This is BIG IMHO Analysis: 'Seismic' Catholic shift to Bush *snip*
  49. T

    News Bush vs Kerry-Who r u voting for

    Who would you vote for... Kerry Bush
  50. Gokul43201

    News The Influence of Public Opinion Polls on Democratic Elections

    When did public pre-election polling first be introduced (I think Gallup, and a few others were set up in the 30s) ? I've always wondered if the knowledge of likely outcomes disrupts the idea of "voting for the person you like best among the field". And if it does, is that a bad thing ...
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