Closed List - Criticism

Criticism

Voting systems using a closed list employ a listing of candidates selected by the party. Whoever controls this list is in a crucial power-brokering role. Members (candidates) elected from the list are essentially in thrall to the list maker—their political survival depends on how high up the list their name appears, or whether it appears at all.

The party executive or party leader generally control the list, consequently closed-list systems transfer political power to the un-elected persons (strategists, delegates, party officials, etc.) who author the party's list of candidates. However, parties can mitigate this by using an internal vote of their members or an open primary to determine the ordering of the lists.

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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:

    Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)