The vote consists of the event by which a person offers his support for a proposal or by a candidate or list of candidates, either in secret form or by means of a public act. The importance of voting lies in its nature of recourse to define the ways to follow by a community, including small groups or also large administrative regions, such as municipalities, provinces or the national state.
The vote is an essential part of the systems of democratic organization. Thus, in modern democracies, universal suffrage is a relevant component of the vote, for which there are no formal exclusions for this Act, within the legal limits that mark the law of each nation. Many historians have emphasized that one of the bras of the democratic societies of the twentieth century has been the amplification of the number of individuals in a position to vote, with the progressive incorporation of younger subjects, women and other traditionally marginalized groups in many of their civic rights.
Likewise, the vote is usually considered as equal, that is, there are no differences in the amount or quality of the vote issued by each elector. In collegiate systems, however, it is emphasized that in the face of equality in the number of votes, the President of the legislative body can cast a second vote to break a tie and define a final path to a proposal.
The condition of secrecy is one of the most important characteristics of the vote today. In this way, the pressures that may arise from factors such as fear, political repression or certain prebendarios aspects, especially in the democracies of non-industrialized countries, are avoided.
The compulsory vote is one of the conditions that has experienced greater debate over the decades, since those who endorse this situation are based on the fact that their implementation makes the universality of the vote more effective. However, its critics believe that, when compulsory, the vote loses its status as a right to become a duty, thereby subtracting its democratic status.
In one way or another, contemporary societies cannot be conceived without understanding in the day or day the undoubted importance of voting in their conformation and functioning.