What is the function of an election in a democracy?

how does an election work in a democracy The Government keeps a list of everyone who is allowed to vote and divides that list up into the areas where people live. In the UK (and in many other places) these areas are subdivided so that you can have elections at different levels for different people. Multi-state, National, Regional and Local. Covering, for example Euro Elections, UK Elections, London Mayor and Assembly Elections and finally Borough elections.

People who think similarly group themselves together into political parties. The parties choose candidates to stand in the election. There can be independent candidates but they often do not get elected.

The parties then put their ideas into something called a Manifesto which they let the general population look at and ask them questions on. They then campaign to let everyone know why they are the best and why the other side(s) are not. Positive campaigning is where you tell everyone why they should vote for all the good things you are going to do. Negative campaigning is picking fault with the other side's manifesto or candidate. Sadly many recent elections have been based on negative campaigns.

A day is chosen (or set down in law) for the election and on that day the people vote for the candidate that they want to represent them. They vote by putting a mark (generally a cross) next to the name of the person they want to win on the paper they are given to vote with. This is called a ballot paper.

In some elections there is a system called first past the post. This means that the person with the most votes wins, even if they don't have the majority of the votes (for example there are 4 candidates A, B, C & D in the poll. A gets 20%, B gets 25%, C gets 25% and D gets 30%. D wins even though 70% of the votes cast were not for D.

Another system is the single transferable vote. In this system the voters list their candidates in order of preference. 1 is given the the one they really want, 2 to the one they would want to win if their favourite didn't get in, 3 against their third favourite and so on. If nobody has more than 50% of the vote the lowest scoring candidate drops out and all of their ballot papers are checked to see where the number 2 votes were to go. These are reallocated and if there is still nobody with 50% +1 then the lowest scoring candidate drops out and their ballot papers are checked until eventually a winner is found.

The numbers of winners for each party is counted and the party with the majority takes control of the Borough, region or country. If there is no clear winner there is a situation called No Overall Control and the parties have to negotiate how they will operate together. This position is sometimes called a hung council, or parliament.

Where there is a clear winner the party can start to put all of their manifesto promises into action by making laws (or repealing or doing away with laws). Sometimes parties do not carry out all of their promises and the opposition (the parties that are smaller) will criticise the majority party for not keeping its promises.