The parliamentary vote is one of the fundamental elements that define a parliamentary system. It is a democratic method of lawmaking in which the majority decides what the council will do. The rights of the minority must be protected but the will of the majority is decisive. Parliamentarians are expected to use the rules of the parliament to its advantage, not merely as a weapon to bludgeon those who disagree with them.
Under a parliamentary system, most executive power is in the hands of a prime minister and department ministers who are selected by the ruling party or coalition. The head of state, whether a hereditary monarch in a constitutional monarchy, an elected president in a presidential republic, or a ceremonial figurehead in a parliamentary republic (such as the Queen in Britain and New Zealand) has limited ceremonial executive power.
Most parliamentary democracies have a bicameral parliament, with two chambers or houses of the legislature. In many cases the lower house is directly elected while the upper house is appointed or chosen by some other means.
Parliaments under the Westminster model are often elected using the plurality electoral system, first past the post. The exceptions are Australia, which uses instant-runoff voting, and the devolved nations of the United Kingdom, which are governed by a hybrid system that includes proportional representation in their regional parliaments.
Under this system, voters are given a ballot paper with one box for constituency and another for party list votes. Voters mark a cross in the box for their first preference candidate. If that candidate does not reach a quota of seats then their votes are transferred to their second preference, and so on until the number of seats is equalised between those elected from constituencies and those elected from the list.