Abstract
Parliamentary elections certainly form the most important procedure in a democratic political system. Nevertheless, there are some difficulties with their application. For instance, in the parliamentary elections in Poland last year, about every sixth vote was wasted or, in other words, it was cast for a political party that failed to be elected to the parliament. Elections also functioned in nondemocratic political systems. In the former Soviet Union, elections were truly celebrated, even though their results were known in advance. Thus, elections had quite different functions in non-democratic political systems than in modern parliamentary democracies. For instance, they were supposed to mobilize society, to show the efficiency of the political system and also to address some purely administrative questions – such as checking who lived at specific addresses.
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