When Việt Nam undergoes the process of democratization, designing the electoral system is a technical factor just as important as choosing a parliamentary, presidential, or semi-presidential government.
The electoral system acts as a “rulebook” that translates voters’ ballots into state power. It directly influences representation, the number of political parties, and the parliamentary power structure. For instance, in parliamentary systems, these rules dictate whether the outcome is a single-party majority government, as seen in the United Kingdom, where one party holds over 50 percent of the seats, or a coalition government like Germany’s.
Many young democracies face crises not due to a lack of political awareness among citizens, but because flawed electoral rules create distorted representation. This distortion leaves political factions dissatisfied and intensifies confrontations. Therefore, a well-designed system must balance fairness, representativeness, and the capacity to form a stable government.
In practice, however, achieving this balance is difficult. The majoritarian election models utilized by the United Kingdom and the United States serve as typical examples; while simple, they are frequently criticized for their lack of representativeness.
In practice, many electoral systems fail to achieve such a balance. A typical example is the legislative election model used in the United Kingdom and the United States, which is simple but frequently criticized for lacking representativeness.
Why Do British and American Elections Distort Representation?
In its simplest form, a country divides itself into districts of roughly equal population, each electing a single representative. Voters choose one candidate from a pool of nominees nominated by various political parties, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. Both the United Kingdom and the United States currently utilize this exact system.
Known as the “winner-takes-all” or plurality system, the victor only needs to secure more votes than their competitors, rather than an absolute majority exceeding 50%. The English term for this is First Past The Post (FPTP), borrowed from horse racing to imply that the first to cross the finish line claims the victory. It is frequently described as an “all-or-nothing” system, as the runner-up receives absolutely nothing, even if they trail by a narrow margin.
Consequently, the FPTP system naturally disadvantages smaller parties and reinforces the dominance of larger ones. In the US, this makes the two-party system stronger, with the Democratic and Republican Parties as the main parties. In the UK, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party have a similar relationship.
To illustrate how this system marginalizes smaller parties, consider a simple hypothetical scenario.
Suppose the city of Colors is divided into four electoral districts, with each district electing one representative. Four parties are competing: Blue, Yellow, Purple, and Salmon.
The voting results in each district are identical:
- 40% of voters support the Blue Party
- 30% support the Yellow Party
- 20% support the Purple Party
- 10% support the Salmon Party.
Since the Blue Party candidate receives the highest number of votes in all four districts, they win every available seat to become Members of Parliament. They only need to outpoll their competitors rather than secure an absolute majority.
Consequently, the voters who supported the Yellow, Purple, and Salmon parties fail to gain any representation. Their ballots, which amount to 60% of the total, are considered “wasted votes.” Meanwhile, the Blue Party ends up holding 100% of the seats despite receiving only 40% of the voter support. This phenomenon is known as a “manufactured majority,” a situation where a political party wins overwhelming legislative power without obtaining a popular majority. Thus, 40% of the vote translates into 100% of the seats and absolute power.
These “wasted votes” and “manufactured majorities” represent two major shortcomings of the FPTP system. The mechanism inherently favors candidates from large, established parties that possess stronger name recognition and robust local support networks. Because each district elects only one winner, voters frequently concentrate their votes on these dominant parties to avoid wasting their ballots, leaving smaller or newly formed parties with little chance of winning seats.
While the Colors example is an extreme hypothetical designed to illustrate electoral distortion, these limitations are not merely theoretical. They frequently manifest in countries utilizing this method. A prominent real-world example is the 2024 United Kingdom House of Commons election. During this race, the gap between vote share and seat share became so pronounced that observers described it as one of the most disproportionate elections in the country’s modern history.
Out of 650 seats, the Labour Party won 411 seats—equivalent to 63% of parliament—despite receiving only about 34% of the nationwide vote. Simultaneously, smaller political factions such as the Green Party and Reform UK suffered significant disadvantages, securing far fewer seats than their actual vote shares suggested.
Notably, Reform UK received more than four million votes—accounting for 14 percent of total ballots cast—yet secured only five seats, which is equivalent to a mere 0.8 percent of the House of Commons. The Labour Party received only about 2.4 times as many votes as Reform UK, yet it obtained 82 times more seats.
These staggering results reignited debates over fairness and representativeness within the “first past the post” system. Despite these glaring shortcomings, the model remains in use across the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, India, Malaysia, and Singapore. Its persistence is largely due to its operational simplicity and its ability to foster a strong link between representatives and local voters, as legislators must pay close attention to their local constituencies to win reelection.
Nevertheless, growing calls for reform in many countries using this system seek to introduce greater proportionality to improve overall fairness and representation. What, then, is proportional representation?
Proportional Representation and Mixed Systems
Simply put, under proportional representation, each political party receives a number of seats that directly corresponds to the share of votes it wins.
Returning to the Colors example, imagine that the entire country forms a single electoral district. The nationwide results remain the same: the Blue Party receives 40 percent, the Yellow Party 30 percent, the Purple Party 20 percent, and the Salmon Party 10 percent. If the parliament consists of 100 seats, the parties would receive 40, 30, 20, and 10 seats, respectively. Consequently, all four parties would secure representation.
While the FPTP method tends to reinforce strict two-party systems, proportional representation generally increases the number of parties represented within a parliament.
This raises an important question: if Việt Nam were to democratize, is there an electoral system capable of correcting manufactured majorities and wasted votes, preserving strong local links between representatives and their constituencies, and ensuring party diversity without causing excessive fragmentation?
The answer is yes.
A promising solution is a mixed electoral system that combines single-member plurality elections with proportional representation. Countries like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Mexico currently elect national legislatures using this framework, known as Mixed-Member Majoritarian (MMM).
In Japan, for example, the House of Representatives contains 465 seats. Of these, 289 are elected through the “first past the post” method, much like in the United Kingdom and the United States. The remaining 176 seats are allocated proportionally, meaning voters cast ballots for political parties rather than individual candidates. These proportional seats are then distributed across 11 large regional districts based on each party’s overall vote share.
Plurality elections typically benefit large, well-established parties, while the proportional seats allow smaller parties to gain crucial representation. This dual approach increases political diversity and mitigates the distortions created by strict majority voting.
How Many Members Should Parliament Have?
As the supreme legislative body, a parliament enacts laws, oversees the government, and represents the will and aspirations of the people. In parliamentary systems, it also holds the authority to form governments and pass votes of confidence or no confidence.
In bicameral systems, the lower house is typically larger and allocated by population, whereas the smaller upper house represents territorial or administrative units. For instance, the United States Senate consists of 100 senators, with each state electing two representatives to advocate for state interests within the federation. Conversely, representation by population plays the dominant role in unicameral legislatures.
Since a parliament is the highest representative institution, determining the optimal number of seats is essential. The “cube root rule,” formulated by political scientist Rein Taagepera, is a commonly proposed metric. Taagepera observed that the number of seats in a nation’s lower house or primary elected chamber frequently approximates the cube root of its total population.
Each country determines its legislative size differently, but experts believe the cube root rule effectively balances democratic representation with institutional efficiency. For Việt Nam, with a population reaching roughly 101 million in 2025, the cube root calculation yields approximately 465 seats.
However, General Secretary Tô Lâm has recently emphasized the principle of building a state apparatus that is “streamlined, strong, effective, efficient, and impactful.” In alignment with this goal, establishing a National Assembly of 450 seats—slightly lower than the calculated figure—is a logical proposal. Because new political parties may still be forming and could remain unstable, a moderately sized legislature could help prevent political fragmentation and significantly reduce operational costs, including infrastructure and legislator salaries.
The question of whether Việt Nam should adopt a bicameral or unicameral parliament remains a separate, larger issue. Assuming a unicameral legislature serves as a simple and effective baseline. If Việt Nam were to transition to a bicameral system in the future, this proposed electoral framework could easily be applied to the lower house.
Hoàng Dạ Lan wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on Feb. 06, 2026. Đàm Vĩnh Hằng translated it into English for The Vietnamese Magazine.
1. Example adapted from Fair Vote Canada. See here.: https://www.fairvote.ca/what-is-first-past-the-post/
2. In the United Kingdom, information and advocacy efforts for electoral reform are led by organizations such as the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Matter. In Canada, initiatives calling for electoral reform can be found through Fair Vote Canada.
3. Taagepera, R. (1972). The size of national assemblies. Social science research, 1(4), 385-401.
4. Lijphart, A. (1998). Reforming the House: Three moderately radical proposals. PS: Political Science & Politics, 31(1), 10-13.
5. Kane, C., Mascioli, G., McGarry, M., & Nagel, M. (2020). Why the House of Representatives must be expanded and how today’s Congress can make it happen. https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship/1100/
