Election and Representation

The governing concept is electoral integrity, which has several connected dimensions. Freedom requires voters to cast ballots without intimidation, coercion, or undue pressure. Fairness requires an impartial and independent election authority, transparent procedures, lawful counting, and a reasonably level opportunity for competing candidates and parties. Merely opening polling stations or completing counting cannot guarantee these conditions, while exclusive campaigning by the ruling party violates fairness. Therefore option A provides the complete understanding.

In the First Past the Post system, representation is awarded constituency by constituency. The candidate with the highest number of votes in a constituency wins its entire seat, even without receiving a majority of all votes. Votes cast for losing candidates do not directly produce seats. Consequently, a party’s national vote share can differ greatly from its seat share. Option A states this mechanism correctly.

Proportional representation aims to distribute seats in approximate relation to the votes received by parties or candidates, subject to the rules of the particular system. A smaller party may therefore gain representation from a dispersed but significant vote share, even if it does not finish first in many individual constituencies. Option B is correct. A states the opposite, while C and D misdescribe the electoral process.

FPTP converts each constituency into a winner-takes-the-seat contest. A party may receive many votes and lose by only a small margin, but those votes do not award it a seat unless its candidate finishes first in that constituency. Repeated narrow defeats can therefore produce many votes but very few seats. Option C is correct. The votes are counted, but they do not translate into representation when the candidate loses.