Voters' Participation in Candidates Selection Process of Deputies to County-level People's Congresses

Based on materials of voter investigation and literature review, the authors describe and analyze the participation behavior and attitude of voters in the process of nominating candidates in the county-level people's congress deputy elections. The study finds that the participation of voters in the nomination period was relatively low, and the participation of voters in different regions and even in the same region was significantly different in the past two decades. In terms of the eligibility and representation of candidates, the election organizer emphasized the function of the representative to undertake descriptive representation, and the electorate had more emphasis on the function of the substantive representation of the representative. From the formal candidate's determination procedure, the election organizers are mainly inclined to adopt non-procedural modalities such as deliberation and consultation to determine the formal candidates, and voters prefer to express their demands through a pre-selected procedural mechanism. The article puts forward some operational suggestions on improving the nomination procedure of candidates.