The parliamentary vote is an important part of a democracy. It determines how laws are made and whether those laws will be enforced.
In a parliamentary system, most people are directly elected to their national parliament (in the UK it is called the House of Commons). Voters cast one vote for a candidate for each constituency. Most candidates are members of a political party, but some are independents. The majority of seats in a Parliament are won by the largest political grouping. Some parliamentary systems use multimember constituencies. Others, like the SNTV system used in Japan and the devolved nations of the United Kingdom, have single-member constituencies.
The political party or coalition that wins a majority selects the prime minister and department ministers who run the government. Other ceremonial executive duties are carried out by a symbolic head of state, such as a hereditary monarch in a constitutional monarchy such as Great Britain or Norway, or an elected president or chancellor in a democratic republic such as Germany, Italy, and Latvia.
In a parliamentary system, if the governing body, the government of the major political party, suffers a vote of no confidence in the legislature (Parliament), that body is dissolved. Then, an election may be called to establish a new Parliament. In addition, a prime minister may request that the Governor General call a double dissolution, in which case all members of parliament are elected simultaneously.
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