FairVote Feed: Europe

How to Guarantee Accountable Legislatures Under Choice Voting (Without Hurting Third Parties)

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:49:55 -0700

As I detailed on this blog last week, Malta recently held a general election using choice voting, a fair voting system with a long history of use in the United States. The election had an exceptionally high turnout, as is typical for Malta, and produced a decisive winner.

But the history of choice voting's use in Malta has not been entirely seamless. In December of 1981, Malta faced an electoral crisis after its national elections gave the majority of seats in Parliament to the Labour Party, who had led the previous government, even though the challenger Nationalist Party received the most first choice rankings. Labour successfully formed a government, but the Nationalists walked out of Parliament. Despite the use of choice voting, Malta's electoral system had produced an unaccountable government: one that was not removed from office by a majority voting for change.

Since choice voting is a proportional system, how did this disproportionate outcome happen? In any election in which seats are allocated within geographic districts (single-seat or multi-seat), wrong-winner elections can occur. Seat-to-vote distortions are most common and severe in winner-take-all elections, such as the election for Michigan's House of Representatives last November in which Republicans retained control of the legislature even though Democrats won 54% of the vote.

But wrong-winners can occasionally occur under fair voting systems as well, particularly when districts have a relatively high threshold for election - the 16.7% threshold in Malta, for instance. Furthermore, because of Malta's small legislature size and evenly divided partisanship, even a small amount of distortion can be enough to produce a wrong-winner legislature.

While this issue does not diminish the many other benefits that choice voting has given to Malta's elections, it does merit being addressed. Malta has tried to do so, modifying its choice voting system after 1981 with a series of amendments that add seats to the legislature to ensure that the party with the most first choice rankings receives the most seats. The seat addition system Malta most recently settled on is complex, but this gist of it is that any party that wins seats at a seat-to-vote ratio lower than that of the party with the highest seat-to-vote ratio will be awarded additional seats until that distortion is corrected.

These changes came at a cost, however. Because they evaluate distortions only based on first choice rankings, they removed one of the biggest advantages of choice voting: namely, the elimination of strategic voting by allowing voters to rank their choices sincerely without any worry that their votes will hurt their desired election outcome. In Malta's current system, votes for minor parties that are unlikely to win any district seats do not affect the allocation of compensatory seats, thus diminishing the voting power of voters who choose to break from the two-party structure.

Fortunately, this tradeoff is not necessary. It is possible to implement a choice voting system that guarantees an accountable government without forcing voters to choose between ranking a minor party first and helping their preferred major party get the most seats in the legislature. FairVote calls such a method a "Districts Plus" system.

Here's how it could work in Malta. There are currently 65 district seats in Malta's legislature, with five representatives from each of the island's 13 districts. Districts Plus would add "accountability seats," which would compensate all parties for any distortions caused by the district system. Based on Malta's recent electoral history, it is unlikely that it would be necessary to add more than five seats after any given election.

There would be a moderate minimum threshold for parties to win accountability seats - let's say 4%. Ballots with first choice rankings for candidates of parties that did not surpass that threshold would have their accountability vote count toward the party of the next different-party candidate ranked on the ballot. After all ballots for parties below the threshold had been distributed, distortions between a party's candidates' share of the vote and the party's share of seats would be determined. The accountability seats would then be filled by the losing candidates from the disadvantaged party that had the most votes when they were eliminated from the original count.

In this way, voters would feel free to rank minor parties first but still have their ballot help their preferred major party be elected. The major party with the most first choice rankings would be guaranteed to win the most seats in Parliament. It is a simple fix and a clear improvement over the false choice between accountability and voter choice that Malta has operated under for the past 30 years.

Malta's most significant third party, the Green Party, has already proposed a similar modification to the one described here, in which any party could win nationwide seats if they surpass a low threshold of votes.

The combination of choice voting with Districts Plus would also be an ideal system for use in legislative elections in the U.S. In the Michigan State House of Representatives, for which FairVote has already developed a Districts Plus plan that maintains the single-member district system, Districts Plus could also be used to guarantee legislature accountability under a multi-member choice voting system. Michigan's 110-seat House could be made up of 30 three-seat districts supplemented by 20 accountability seats or 20 five-seat districts with 10 accountability seats. Because large distortions are much less likely under choice voting than under winner-take-all, fewer accountability seats are necessary to ensure an accountable government in a choice voting system. All other aspects of the Malta Districts Plus system described above could be applied to Michigan, or indeed any other state legislature in the U.S.

Again, it should be stressed that the addition of accountability seats is not necessary for a choice voting system to have a very high degree of proportionality. If the goal is to guarantee accountability, however, Districts Plus is the best way to ensure that voter choice and third parties are not harmed in the process.

Malta Elections Have 93% Turnout Using Choice Voting

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:39:37 -0700

On March 9, 2013, the citizens of Malta cast their ballots for their national Parliament and local governments. The elections were conducted using choice voting (also known as the single transferable vote), FairVote's preferred fair voting method of conducting multi-seat elections in the United States. There are, of course, inherent differences between elections in the small Mediterranean nation of Malta and in the U.S. But Malta's electoral experience demonstrates several of the ways in which choice voting could improve American elections - starting with the fact that Malta consistently finds itself atop the world rankings in voter turnout for countries without compulsory voting.

First, the election results: the center-left Labour Party defeated the center-right Nationalist Party, gaining control of the Parliament of Malta for the first time since 1998. Labour's candidates won a clear majority of 54.8% of votes as measured by first choice rankings. Because choice voting is a fair voting system (that is, a form of proportional representation), a change in leadership when the majority of voters decided they wanted a new government was guaranteed. That is not the case in the United States, in which the Republican Party won a large majority of House seats despite receiving fewer votes than Democrats in 2012.

Accountable governments are characteristic of all proportional systems, but choice voting has some unique benefits. Malta's national elections are most distinguished by their unusually high voter turnout - consistently well over 90%, including 93% this past Saturday. Though these high turnout rates are caused by multiple factors, political scientists have suggested that Malta's use of choice voting is at the very least a major contributor.

That's because choice voting maximizes the importance of a vote, allowing voters to rank candidates of all parties in order of preference and elect candidates with a relatively low threshold. Every district in the country is extremely competitive, as not only are both major parties represented in each district (all 13 districts will have bipartisan representation in the new parliament) but also candidates have to compete against other members of their own party. Parties often run more than five candidates in a district among which even strict partisans can choose. No voter is marginalized, and all have the ability to affect the election outcome with their vote.

It is worth mentioning what choice voting has not been able to accomplish in Malta: representation in Parliament of more than two parties. The two-party structure has a long history in Malta, and third parties have never been able to make much headway in spite of the low threshold to win a seat: just 16.7% of a district's vote. Things were made much harder for third parties when Malta modified its single transferable vote system to add seats after each election that ensure that the party that receives the most first choice rankings always gets the most seats, in response to a political crisis in 1981 when that did not occur.

While accountability is now guaranteed, voters are forced to use their first choice rankings strategically if they want to help their preferred major party win control of the government, instead of being able to vote for a third party candidate who might be their favorite option. Because of that, FairVote does not advocate for such a rule when choice voting is used in the U.S.

Though voters are, in practice, limited to two credible parties in Malta, they are still able to express their more nuanced political preferences by choosing candidates within a party. Because the biggest challenge for candidates is intra-party competition, candidates have an incentive to appeal strongly to a specific subset of voters. Incumbents most often lose because of shifting preference votes within parties, not by being defeated by the opposing party.

This effect can help to mitigate the political polarization in Malta's elections by ensuring that the slate of Members of Parliament (MPs) from a district represents the entire political spectrum, not just two poles. For one example of how this works in practice, take the case of Franco Debono, a former MP from District 5. Depono single-handedly brought down Lawrence Gonzi's Nationalist government by defecting to the opposition on a budget vote in December of 2012, forcing Gonzi to call elections. In the 2008 election, District 5 elected three candidates from the Labour Party and two from the Nationalist Party, one of which was Debono. Clearly, Debono was the more moderate - or at least independent-minded - of the two Nationalist representatives.

In 2013, Debono decided not to run for re-election in District 5. In a year that decisively favored the Labour Party, Debono's seat went to Labour, as four Labour candidates won election from District 5. Most likely, the Labour candidate who will be effectively "replacing" Debono will be similarly moderate.

This phenomenon is exactly what FairVote projects would happen if choice voting were implemented in five-seat districts in the United States. A district split evenly between Democrats and Republicans would elect both moderate and more extreme candidates from each party, with a moderate candidate elected from the middle seat on the spectrum that would switch between the parties depending on which party had the advantage in each election. Though the two-party structure is just as entrenched in the U.S. as it is in Malta, choice voting would allow voters to elect candidates from across the political spectrum in each multi-member district.

Choice voting in Malta is without a doubt a success story, and the 2013 elections were no exception. Malta's elections had far higher turnout, voter choice, and government accountability than their November 2012 counterpart in the United States. Though Malta cannot be directly compared to the U.S., the effectiveness of choice voting there tells a powerful story about just how much better American elections could be.

For more information on how choice voting works in Malta, check out this excellent explanatory video by Bernard Magri and this pre-election article from the Times of Malta.

Italian Elections Expose Non-Proportional and Ineffective Voting System

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:27:39 -0800

Election results come in Monday night / AP

In the aftermath of Italy's general election on February 25-26, outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti asserted that "no country has such a bad electoral law as Italy." That may be an exaggeration, but there was plenty to be dissatisfied with in the election results. When the electoral dust settles, the Italian system will have accomplished neither of its two goals: fair representation or stable and effective governance.

Even though one coalition, led by Pier Luigi Bersani, received a vastly disproportionate number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies, there is no obvious possible coalition for a majority to control both the Chamber and the Senate. In a governmental system that requires the support of both houses, that means that a government might not be formed and new elections will be necessary.

Electoral systems can't take all the blame for Italy's political dysfunction, of course. Italian politics have been fragmented since the rise of Italian city-states in the 11^th century, and the nation was unable to escape that fragmentation following World War II. Italy's political troubles have persisted through a variety of electoral systems, including a fully proportional open list system, a mostly winner-take-all (with a few compensatory PR seats) system enacted in 1993, and finally the current system concocted by then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 2005.

That said, let's give the current system some blame. First, here's how it works: in the Chamber of Deputies, whichever pre-election coalition wins the most votes nationwide will receive 55% of the seats (or a proportional number of seats in the unlikely scenario that any coalition wins more than 55% of the vote). Seats are divided proportionally among parties within the coalition, and parties outside the coalition receive proportional shares of the remaining 45% of seats. The system is identical in the Senate, except seats are apportioned by region, instead of nationwide - that is, the coalition that wins the most votes in each region will receive 55% of that region's seats.

These are the election results that the system produced:

Coalition Leader	Political Position	% Vote for Senate	% Seats in Senate	% Vote for Chamber	% Seats in Chamber
Pier Luigi Bersani	Center-Left	31.6	38.4	29.5	55.1
Silvio Berlusconi	Center-Right	30.7	37.1	29.2	20.1
Giuseppe Piero Grillo	Anti-Establishment	23.8	17.1	25.6	17.5
Mario Monti	Centrist	9.1	7.0	10.6	7.3

Bersani's coalition won a very slight plurality of the vote with less than a third of all votes in both houses. But because of Italy's winner-take-all law, Bersani's center-left parties will receive a majority of seats in the Chamber. The Chamber's electoral system is effectively a plurality system for parties, with all the problems that implies: potential vote-splitting issues, which likely occurred in this election, and vote-to-seat distortion - in this case, an enormous distortion of over 20%.

All that wouldn't be so bad if it at least guaranteed that a majority government could be formed. But because the Senate gives its majority bonus by region instead of nationally, it is entirely possible that a party could win the most Senate votes nationwide but not win a majority of seats. Bersani again won a slight plurality of votes, but wound up with only a slight plurality of seats due to Berlusconi victories in several regions. With comedian Beppe Grillo's anti-establishment 5 Star Movement adamantly refusing to join a coalition with either the right or the left, forming a majority government in the Senate may be impossible.

Bersani's coalition may form a minority government, and as Grillo has stated that his party would "vote those laws that reflect its program, regardless of who presents them," it is possible that such a government could pass some legislation. The 5 Star Movement has had some success with voting on a case-by-case basis in Sicily, where it has controlled the largest share of seats since regional elections last October. Grillo's quick rise shows the value of the degree of proportionality that does exist in Italy, as voters had the ability to express their dissatisfaction with the major parties via the ballot box.

Even if a minority government is formed, though, it seems that the most likely outcome is new elections in the coming months.

Berlusconi has defended his electoral system by claiming that it would bring "bipolarity" to Italian politics. It has not been able to overcome Italy's fractured political culture, however, and the system has shown itself to be dysfunctional in a multi-party situation. It does not accurately represent the Italian people or reliably create stable governments, and it can give voters some very weird strategic voting incentives.

Nonetheless, given the challenges inherent in Italian politics, devising a superior electoral system to the current one will not be easy. The best option for Italy is likely a more purely proportional system with a relatively high threshold for parties to be seated in Parliament. Though it might seem counter-intuitive that Italy could become more governable by making it more difficult for one party to win a majority of seats, the greater flexibility of parties to create post-election coalitions could make stable governments easier to form.

One final note: it is worth stressing (as FairVote has in the past) that the failure of Italy's electoral system in this election should not be used as an argument against proportional representation in general or against the use of fair voting in the U.S. Italy's unique political culture makes it impossible to assume that a given electoral system used there would have similar effects used anywhere else. More importantly, as Professor Matthew Shugart has argued, Italy's electoral system cannot actually be classified as a form of proportional representation due to the huge bonus given to the party with the most votes.

Italy, like Israel, has long been used as a punching bag by opponents of proportional representation. But proportional representation comes in many varieties, and what works and what does not cannot be taken out of the context of the nation holding the elections. This week's messy election exposes the many problems with Italy's current voting system, but there is no basis for claims that the United States would experience similar problems if it were to use superior forms of fair voting, such as the moderate, candidate-based alternatives presented in FairVote's Fair Voting 2012 report.

Gender Parity: A Case for Fair Voting and Party Rules

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:37:16 -0800

The United States trails behind ninety-one countries for women's representation in its national legislature. Ranking behind most industrialized democracies, women fill a mere eighteen percent of U.S. Congressional seats. Many factors contribute to the level of descriptive representation (representation that reflects the electorate) present in a state's government. Two striking influences on representation are structural and institutional: the electoral system in place and the party rules employed. Women tend to gain more seats in national legislatures when countries use fair voting (proportional representation), particularly when fair voting is used in tandem with either gender quotas or internal rules to promote women's representation.

Fair voting systems rely on multi-seat districts, which create more incentives for parties to nominate women and for individual women to choose to run. Of the top twenty counties for women's representation, nineteen use a fair voting system; the exception being Cuba, which does not have multi-party elections. A major reason for this trend is that fair voting systems employ multi-seat districts. Meaning, a given voter will have more than one person representing them and their district. Multi-seat elections encourage efforts to recruit female candidates, as demonstrated by the fact that 6 of the top 10 state legislatures for women's representation have multi-seat legislative districts.

Fair voting describes a wide range of approaches that translate votes into representation. In general, like-minded groups of voters can elect their preferred candidates in proportion to their support in their district. Meaning, twenty percent of the vote would win one of five seats; and earning a majority of the vote would earn three of five seats. Fair voting can take two forms: closed-list systems and open-list systems. Scholars debate which approach is better for women.

Twelve of the top twenty countries for women's representation use closed-list systems. Closed-list describes systems where a voter selects a party, and that party fills its share of seats with candidates in the order presented to the voters on their list. The case for closed-list systems being better for women is that voters tend to be attracted to parties with descriptive (or balanced) lists, incentivizing parties to run more women; and parties can choose to ensure the election of more women simply by putting them higher on the list.

Seven of the top 20 nations for women's representation use open-list systems. An open list system is one that still has a party definition (that is, the vote for a party determines its share of seats), but voters can vote for candidates directly in a way that affects the order of candidates who fill the seats. Advocates of open-list systems being better for women believe voters, rather than party officials, are more likely to choose female leadership. Advocates of each position may be right, as much depends on the context and how open the major parties are to nominating women high up in their list.

The most certain way to get women into office is through national gender quotas. Many countries have set national gender quotas; some states have used gender quotas as a temporary measure, while others have made gender quotas enduring policy. Of the top twenty counties for women's representation, two use gender quotas: Rwanda, ranking first, and Timor-Leste, ranking sixteenth. Rwanda, a country best known as the site of an ethnic genocide in which approximately 800,000 people were murdered, mostly ethnic Tutsis, is now leading the way in women's representation. After the conflict, a new constitution was established, mandating a gender quota that reserved thirty percent of the seats in all decision-making bodies of government for women. Drafters of the new constitution believed women are less prone to violence, which gave credence to the quota after a bloody civil war. In 2008, Rwandans elected twenty-six percent women to their national legislature. And thirty percent of the seats were reserved for women, bringing the total percentage of women in Rwanda's national legislature to fifty-six percent .

Constitutional gender quotas are certainly an effective way to reach gender parity in politics but there are less severe policy alternatives. Sweden has an open-list system and has not adopted national gender quotas but is ranked fourth for women's representation with women filling forty-five percent of the seats in its nation legislature. Three of Sweden's major political parties, the Social Democratic Party, the Moderate Party and the Green Party, along with a minor political party, the Left Party, have established party rules that promote gender parity in politics. The Social Democratic Party has instituted a zipper system, in which one sex alternates the other on the party list. The Green Party and the Left Party have adopted fifty percent gender quotas. Meanwhile, the moderate party places two men and two women at the top of their list, creating a balance in leadership.

In 1971, women's representation in Sweden was at 14 percent ; it has since more than tripled. The turning point occurred in 1972 when the leaders from two major parties, the Social Democrats and the Liberals, began competing for the female vote. In 1972, the Social Democrats, being in power at the time, instituted a central gender policy unit in government. The same year, the Liberals formally recommended that women should make up forty percent of internal leadership positions. Decades later, several Swedish parties voluntarily wrote gender regulations into the statues of their parties. The Green Party established its own gender quotas from the beginning, when it was set up in 1981. The Social Democratic and Left Parties adopted gender quotas in 1993. Following these gender quotas, "Every second seat for a woman" became a popular slogan in Swedish politics. Sixteen years later, in 2009, the Moderate Party adopted its party rule to promote gender parity in party leadership.

With only eighteen percent of Congressional seats filled by women, the United States should have a more serious debate about concrete measures to ensure women gain equal representation in government. Gender quotas may be politically unthinkable in this political culture, but we believe the major parties will adopt party rules to promote women candidates. Both Democrats and Republicans have already taken a step in the right direction by instituting party rules for gender parity in leadership positions within the parties. The Republican National Committee reserves one position for a man and one position for a woman from every state and territory. Building on that foundation, Democrats and Republicans could develop party rules for gender parity in elective races. Further, we should consider adopting fair voting systems, as they would expand multi-seat district elections, which advance female candidacies with or without quotas.

Our democracy and public life are weaker because we do not utilize the skills, experiences and talents of over half of the population. In a strong democracy, the government should look like its citizens. To that end, it's time to become consensus builders seeking long-term solutions to the underrepresentation of women. Instituting new party rules and fair voting is a good place to start.

Czech Republic Holds First Popular Election for President

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:46:14 -0800

On January 26, Czech citizens had the chance to directly elect their president for the first time since the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Prior to a constitutional amendment in 2012, the Czech president was elected indirectly by the Czech parliament.

The Czech Republic chose to use a majority runoff system for its presidential election - the method used by most presidential democracies around the world. If no candidate wins a majority of votes in the first round of elections, a runoff election between the top two candidates is held.

As current president Vaclav Klaus is finishing his second term and is forbidden by the Czech constitution from running for a third, the election field was wide open. Two front-runners emerged, however: former Prime Minister Milos Zeman and current foreign minister Karl Schwarzenberg.

In the first round of the election, held on January 11-12, nine candidates (including three women) were on the ballot. As none of the nine received more than 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getting candidates, Zeman (24%) and Schwarzenberg (23%), advanced to the second round. The runoff election, which took place last weekend, allowed voters to pick between those two. Zeman proved to have the most support, winning 55% of the runoff vote and election to the presidency.

The new Czech system of electing presidents is superior to the American Electoral College system in several ways. In this election, every Czech citizen had the opportunity to cast a ballot of equal value for president, no voters could be safely ignored by the candidates, and the winner was guaranteed to be the candidate who had the support of the majority of the electorate. Because a runoff was used, there was no risk of voters splitting their votes in the final round.

The system could still be improved further by implementing instant runoff voting, which would require only one election instead of two and would allow voters to rank candidates in order of their preferences. Nonetheless, the first Czech presidential election using a majority runoff system should be considered a success.

Putin Orders Return to Parallel Electoral System for Russian Duma

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 10:38:58 -0800

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Central Electoral Commission to prepare a draft law proposing new rules for electing the Russian parliament. The new system is going to be unveiled in the coming weeks and is scheduled to be submitted by March.

Putin's plan will return Russia to the parallel system that Russia used through 2003, after using a fully closed list proportional system to elect the Duma in the 2007 and 2011 elections. Half of the future members of the Duma will still be elected by a proportional representation system based on closed party lists, but the other half will be chosen using winner-take-all elections in single member constituencies.

President Putin argues that single member constituencies will favor independent candidates and help to liberalize Russian politics. Despite this interpretation, the return to a parallel system is more likely to further entrench his United Russia party in power, as the New York Times reports. Because United Russia is still the biggest party in most areas of Russia, it will be very difficult for independent and opposition party candidates to win many single-member district seats, especially without the name recognition and resources of a major party behind them.

The pernicious effects of such a parallel electoral system can be seen in Ukraine, where a similar system gave the party of President Viktor Yanukovich a large plurality of seats in parliament despite a mediocre performance in the nationwide vote.

United Russia is no stranger to manipulating electoral systems to favor its interests; in Russia's local elections held last October, Putin's party took advantage of plurality voting rules to fracture the opposition and maintain its hold on most local governments.

Do not be fooled by Putin's claims that the reintroduction of single-member, winner-take-all seats to the Duma will be a step towards a fairer and freer democracy in Russia. It is instead a step towards the continuation of one-party rule.

Ukrainian Elections Are Another Example of Partisan Bias Caused by Winner-Take-All

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 08:31:15 -0800

The 2012 parliamentary elections in Ukraine, held on October 28, have been cited as evidence of a backslide in Ukrainian democracy from the promise showed in the Orange Revolution of 2004. The consensus among international observers is that the elections were "rigged," in various ways, to benefit the ruling Party of Regions, headed by President Victor Yanukovych. The election results suggest that they were right, but that the single biggest cause of electoral bias was Ukraine's election of so many seats according to winner-take-all voting rules.

One of the largest nations in the former Soviet Union with a population of over 45 million, Ukraine has been led by President Yanukovych since his election in 2010. The most salient issue in this election was that two of Yanukovych's high-profile political opponents, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former interior minister Yuri Lutsenko, have been imprisoned for what seem to be political reasons. Furthermore, the ruling party has been accused of using state-run television and newspapers for political gain and being opaque about the origins of its campaign funds.

The biggest setback for Ukrainian democracy in this election, however, may have been structural. Between 2006 and 2011, Ukraine used a fully proportional party list system for electing its legislature, the Verkhovna Rada. In the 2007 parliamentary elections, for instance, the Party of Regions received 34% of the popular vote and 39% of seats in parliament, while the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc won 35% of seats with 30% of the popular vote. There was very little structural bias in favor of one party.

But in November 2011, the Party of Regions succeeded in passing a new electoral law that required half of parliament to be elected using single member districts, while the remaining half would still be selected based on a nationwide (not compensatory) popular vote. An OSCE report on the 2012 elections described the process of drawing up the new electoral law as "not fully inclusive." The law was essentially a reversion to the system that had been used in Ukraine from 1998 through 2005.

The new law dramatically favored the Party of Regions at the expense of most opposition parties, particularly the Yulia Tymoshenko-led All-Ukrainian Union. In the half of the legislature elected by proportional representation, the Party of Regions won 72 seats for its 30% of the vote and the All-Ukrainian Union won 62 seats with 26% of the vote. In the constituency seats elected on a winner-take-all basis, however, the Party of Regions won 113 seats to the All-Ukrainian Union's 39--a massive distortion. The Communist Party of Ukraine, which garnered 13% of the party list votes and 32 seats from those votes, did not win a single winner-take-all seat.

To put those results into an American context: in the 2012 House elections, Republicans received 25 more House seats than they likely would have under a national proportional voting system, giving them a majority in the House despite Democrats winning more total votes and an underlying national preference for Democrats of more than 3%. In Ukraine's 2012 elections (electing a similarly-sized legislature of 450 members), the Party of Regions won 41 more seats than it would have under a fully proportional system. Had Ukraine elected its entire legislature using winner-take-all like the U.S. does, the Party of Regions would have had an 82-seat structural advantage.

There are many problems in Ukrainian democracy that must be fixed in order to ensure a level playing field in future elections. Changing the new electoral system that saw the ruling party win more seats than it did in 2007 despite receiving considerably fewer votes has to be a priority for pro-democracy reformers in Ukraine.

France May Introduce a Little Bit of Proportional Representation to its Legislative Elections

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:22:51 -0800

An election reform committee formed in July by French President Francois Hollande has recommended that France elect 10% of its National Assembly, the lower house of its legislature, using proportional representation. The committee, headed by former prime minister Lionel Jospin, suggested that these 10% be elected using a closed list form of PR--meaning that parties would select an ordered list of candidates and voters would vote for the party list of their choice. The system would work parallel to the winner-take-all, single-member district system, which would still elect 90% of National Assembly members. Each French voter would cast two votes for National Assembly: one for a candidate to represent their district, and one for their national party of choice.

It is doubtful, however, that this change would have a significant effect on the results of French elections. Because the 10% would be elected in a parallel vote and would not be compensatory--that is, assigned to parties to compensate for the distortions created by winner-take-all--it would only have minimal impact on the makeup of the National Assembly.

In the June 2012 legislative election, for instance, the left-wing Socialist Party won 280 seats (49% of the total) with 29% of the first round vote, the right-wing Union for a Popular Movement won 194 seats (38%) with 27% of the first round vote, and the far-right National Front and communist Left Front won just 12 seats combined (2%) with 23% of the popular vote. Under the proposed electoral system, assuming everyone voted for the same party that they voted for in the first round, here's how things would change: the Socialists would have ended up with 269 seats (11 fewer), UPM with 190 seats (4 fewer), and the two radical parties 25 seats combined (13 more). That's very slightly more proportional, but not enough to give parties with broad but shallow appeal like the National Front a significant role in the legislature or change the balance of power between the major parties.

Nonetheless, the Jospin commission sets a positive example for the United States by showing that the French government takes electoral reform seriously. The Obama administration would make a good start towards "fixing that" by creating similar comissions to study improvements that could be made to American elections--proportional representation among them.

Putin's United Russia Wins Resounding Victories in Local Elections

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 07:55:33 -0700

Election officials draw ballots from ballot boxes after the election / RIA Novosti

As the results of Russia's October 14 local elections show, the rumors of United Russia's death have been greatly exaggerated.

Protests against Vladimir Putin and his United Russia Party, starting in December of last year, appeared to shake the foundations of the Russian political titan's hold on power. But Putin won a decisive victory in the March 4 presidential elections, and the October 14 elections further confirmed United Russia's continued dominance of Russian politics. The party won the majority of the 5,000 regional and local elections held on Sunday, including all five gubernatorial elections.

The legitimacy of the election results is somewhat marred, however, by low voter turnout--hovering in the 30-40% range in most regions--and accusations of electoral fraud. According to the independent monitoring organization Golos, there were "open and transparent violations of the law, and nobody in government is doing anything about it."

More problematic than cases of fraud, however, are the restrictive and undemocratic electoral laws that the Kremlin implemented for this election. In elections for provincial governorships, for instance, candidates were required to represent a party--preventing any independents from running. Furthermore, those candidates had to have the endorsement of at least five percent of lawmakers in regional legislatures, which are largely in the control of United Russia. There is also the problem of what Golos (via the Huffington Post), refers to as "spoiler candidates," who are "used to steal votes from genuine opposition candidates" in single seat races.

The Huffington Post's analysis doesn't make it entirely clear whether the so-called spoiler candidates are simply third parties with low levels of support or are actually being enlisted by the Kremlin to create problems for the opposition. Either way, the obvious solution is enacting instant runoff voting for single seat races. That would allow voters to choose whichever minor candidates they prefer as their first choice without harming their preference among the major candidates--whether that preference be for United Russia or an opposition party. In multi-seat elections for local legislatures, a more uniform proportional representation system nationwide would help to prevent parties from manipulating local election rules to their advantage.

While electoral fraud is a problem in Russia and should continue to be closely monitored, the electoral structures that Russia chooses will likely have an even greater impact on its developing democracy. Those systems should be given more attention in outside media coverage of Russian elections.

Opposition Parties Win First Round of Lithuanian Elections

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:19:02 -0700

Lithuanian voters at the ballot box on Sunday / AP

In Lithuanian national elections held on October 14th, the opposition left-wing Labor and Social Democrats parties won the most votes, making the end of Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius's conservative government likely. The results have been attributed to a backlash against austerity policies and tax increases instituted by the government in the wake of the European debt crisis. Labor, the Social Democrats, and the Labor and Order party are expected to form a governing coalition once the results of the second round of the election become official.

The reason the election is not yet over is that Lithuania uses a two-round runoff system to elect roughly half of its legislature (71 of 140 members). These members are elected from single-seat constituencies, and if no candidate receives an absolute majority--over 50%--of the vote in the first round, then a runoff election between the two highest vote-getting candidates is held two weeks later. Usually, more than half of the single-member seats require a runoff. For the remaining 70 seats, an open list proportional representation system is used. Unlike in some "mixed member" systems, the proportional seats are not used to make overall representation in the legislature reflective of each party's support.

There is a lot to like about the Lithuanian electoral system. Open list proportional representation is an excellent method of ensuring that the preferences of voters for both parties and candidates are accurately represented in the composition of parliament. For the single-member districts, a two round system is preferable to a plurality system because it will always lead to winning candidates having the support of the majority of voters. Furthermore, the short two week period between the first and second rounds is helpful, as it makes a significant drop in voter turnout due to a loss of interest less likely--a phenomenon that often occurs in U.S. runoffs in which there is a gap of several months between the first and second rounds of voting.

The Lithuanian system is not perfect, however. The fact that half of the legislature is elected from single-member districts creates inherent distortion in the makeup of parliament. For instance, in the 2008 elections, the top two vote-getting parties were both politically center-right: Homeland Union -- Lithuanian Christian Democrats and the National Resurrection Party. Each received a similar percentage of the vote--20% for the former and 15% for the latter. However, Homeland Union ended up with 45 seats to National Resurrection's 16 because of a huge discrepancy in their success in the winner-take-all single-seat constituencies.

Electing Lithuania's entire legislature using open list PR, or using a mixed member PR system (in which distortions caused by geographic constituencies are compensated for so that final composition of the legislature mirrors national vote percentages), would better represent the views of its people in government and improve Lithuanian democracy.