Electoral Systems 101

Elections can happen in a set of districts (with separate contests) that together form a polity or “at large,” with the same contest across the whole polity.

• District: Geographical subregions into which a city, county, state, or country is divided for election purposes.

• At large: A single contest that takes place across the whole polity, such as a whole city, county, state, or nation.

Take the example of "Dodoville," a small city with a 3-member city council. They are decided whether to elect councilors at large or in districts. 

Our government structure—the Constitution, our electoral laws, the rules and conventions of politics and elections—represent our values and priorities as a people. Increasingly it is understood that government can, and should, be deliberately designed to achieve certain goals and reflect the values we hold dear. 

Three key concepts are important for anyone interested in designing a better democracy: 

1. Constitutional engineering: Popularized by political scientist Giovanni Sartori in Comparative Constitutional Engineering (1994), constitutional engineering is the intentional design or reform of a political unit’s constitution and legal structures. 

2. Political engineering: Also involving intentional design and reform, political engineering involves applying political science knowledge to the design or reform of our institutions to achieve specific social, electoral, or governance outcomes.

3. Constitution-building:  This is as a long-term and historical process, in which a polity agrees on the need for change, establishes rules for drafting the new rules, writes the new constitution (using concepts from constitutional and political engineering), gives it legal effect through a ratification process, and implements the new constitution.