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An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office.〔("Election (political science)," ) Encyclpoedia Britanica Online. Retrieved 18 August 2009〕 Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated since the 17th century.〔 Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and for regional and local government. This process is also used in many other private and business organizations, from clubs to voluntary associations and corporations. The universal use of elections as a tool for selecting representatives in modern representative democracies is in contrast with the practice in the democratic archetype, ancient Athens, where the Elections were considered an oligarchic institution and most political offices were filled using sortition, also known as allotment, by which officeholders were chosen by lot.〔Headlam, James Wycliffe (1891). Election by Lot at Athens. p. 12.〕 Electoral reform describes the process of introducing fair electoral systems where they are not in place, or improving the fairness or effectiveness of existing systems. Psephology is the study of results and other statistics relating to elections (especially with a view to predicting future results). To ''elect'' means "to choose or make a decision", and so sometimes other forms of ballot such as referendums are referred to as elections, especially in the United States. ==History== Elections were used as early in history as ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and throughout the Medieval period to select rulers such as the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope.〔 In Vedic period of India, the ''raja'' (chiefs) of a ''gana'' (a tribal organization) was apparently elected by the ''gana''. The ''raja'' belonged to the noble Kshatriya varna (warrior class), and was typically a son of the previous ''raja''. However, the ''gana'' members had the final say in his elections. The Pala king Gopala (ruled c. 750s–770s CE) in early medieval Bengal was elected by a group of feudal chieftains. Such elections were quite common in contemporary societies of the region. In Chola Empire, around 920 CE, in Uthiramerur (in present-day Tamil Nadu), palm leaves were used for selecting the village committee members. The leaves, with candidate names written on them, were put inside a mud pot. To select the committee members, a young boy was asked to take out as many leaves as the number of positions available. This was known as the ''Kudavolai'' system. Ancient Arabs also used election to choose their caliph, Uthman and Ali, in the early medieval Rashidun Caliphate.〔''Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World'' (2004), vol. 1, p. 116-123.〕 The modern "election", which consists of public elections of government officials, didn't emerge until the beginning of the 17th century when the idea of representative government took hold in North America and Europe.〔 Questions of suffrage, especially suffrage for minority groups, have dominated the history of elections. Males, the dominate cultural group in North America and Europe, often dominated the electorate and continue to do so in many countries.〔 Early elections in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States were dominated by landed or ruling class males.〔 However, by 1920 all Western European and North American democracies had universal adult male suffrage (except Switzerland) and many countries began to consider women's suffrage.〔 Despite legally mandated universal suffrage for adult males, political barriers were sometimes erected to prevent fair access to elections (See Civil Rights movement).〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Election」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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