FairVote Feed: International Elections

Pakistan - Peaceful Transitions but Winner-Take-All Failure

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:18:42 -0700

On May 11, 2013, Pakistan held elections heralding the first peaceful transfer of government power in the nation’s history. That achievement is a tremendous step for democracy in Pakistan, and perhaps a harbinger of positive changes to come. But did the election result in a vibrant representative body? Could it be characterized as a fair and free election? Unfortunately, no. The country still has a long way to go before its elections can be considered truly fair and representative. Some of the most serious problems that plagued this month’s elections – distorted outcomes, vote-splitting, and uncompetitive elections - resulted from Pakistan’s use of winner-take-all elections. To fix those problems, we have a familiar solution: proportional representation.

Pakistan is no stranger to proportional representation. The members of its Senate, a body that gives equal representation to each of Pakistan’s eight provinces, are elected indirectly using single transferable vote (also known as choice voting) in each provincial assembly. In the Pakistani National Assembly, the parliament’s lower house, the 70 seats guaranteed to women and religious minorities are chosen based on a proportional party list system.

The rest of the National Assembly, however—272 out of 342 total seats—is elected using a winner-take-all, or “first-past-the-post,” electoral system, a less than desirable hand-me-down from the departed British colonial rulers. As FairVote’s Monopoly Politics report shows, winner-take-all voting has done significant damage to the U.S. House of Representatives, creating a stagnant and polarized body that is unrepresentative of the American people.

In Pakistan, these problems are magnified ten times over. The country is regionally divided and religiously diverse, with multiple parties competing for and participating in government. As bad as winner-take-all is in a two-party system, it is even more problematic in a multi-party system, since candidates can easily get elected with only a small fraction of the overall vote. Talk about a perfect storm for a divisive and contentious governing body. Furthermore, winner-take-all leads to larger parties getting a disproportionately high share of the seats, while smaller parties get significantly lower representation in the legislature compared to their vote share. Even when smaller parties manage to reach the 5% threshold to win one of the women’s party list seats, they still tend to be underrepresented.

Similar to the way congressional districts are apportioned by state in the U.S. House, each of Pakistan’s provinces holds a different portion of seats in the National Assembly. Once seats are allocated, Pakistan’s multiple parties usually have to form a ruling coalition since no party is likely to hold over 50% of seats. This year, however, Prime Minister-elect Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistani Muslim League (PML-N) will likely be able to form a coalition with only independent candidates, bypassing other major parties. It was one of the more decisive outcomes in recent Pakistani electoral history.

But is that what Pakistan’s electorate actually wanted? A closer look at the vote totals tells a different story.

The center-right PML-N picked up 125 National Assembly seats, more than four times as many as any other party, despite receiving a small plurality of 32.6% of the vote. That is, more than two thirds of voters voted against PML-N, yet the party will be in near-complete control of policy.

In second place, the leftist Pakistani People’s Party (PPP) won 27 seats with 15% of the vote. The center-left Pakistan Tehrik-i-insaf (PTI), despite predictions that it would benefit significantly from the high turnout in the election, won only 26 seats. Considering that the PTI did not win any seats in 2008, that seat total seems impressive, but in fact party leader Imran Khan deserved many more seats than he received. PTI won 17% of the nationwide vote, but that vote was not concentrated in a specific region, unlike the votes of most other parties. A minority party with broad geographic support like PTI is doomed under winner-take-all.

Much of the vote to seat distortion stems from vote splitting between PPP, PTI, and smaller parties in Punjab, the largest province of Pakistan. PML-N had 26% of voter support in Punjab overall but won a whopping 78% of seats in the province. It seems likely that many PPP and PTI voters would have preferred the other party over PML-N, but the use of plurality voting prevented them from registering that preference.

This year was not the first time that winner-take-all has led to negative consequences in Pakistan. In 2002, the PPP garnered 25.8% of the nationwide vote, the highest percentage won by any of the 70 parties running. In a close second was the center-right leaning PML-Q led by General Pervez Musharaff which won 25.7% of the vote. A number of parties won single seats with just .2% of the vote. Yet winner-take-all squashed the PPP’s small vote advantage, as PML-Q won 126 seats compared to the PPP’s 81. The 2008 election had similar distorted results. The PML-N won 19.6% of the vote while the PML-Q won 23% of the vote. But after the effects of winner-take-all seat allocation, the PML-N had 91 seats and the PML-Q was left with 54.

It is no surprise, then, that last June, the Pakistani Supreme Court issued a strong condemnation of the Pakistani system of winner-take-all in response to a constitutional petition filed by the Worker’s Party, which sought a more level playing field for political parties in Pakistan. The Court argued that first-past-the-post “violates the principle of majority rule,” citing that over 40% of races in the 2008 election were won with just a plurality—under 50%— of the vote. The Court did not issue any specific electoral reform recommendations, but it did advise Pakistan’s Election Commission (ECP) to consider adopting either runoff voting for single-seat elections or switching to proportional representation, likely using a mixed-member system.

In January 2013, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) convened to review proposals for electoral reform, chief among them being reforming FPTP. The ECP concluded meetings by sending a further reference to the federal law ministry based on the Supreme Court’s recommendations from June. In a media briefing on January 23, the director general of the Commission noted that the reference included a recommendation for an absolute majority system, complete with a runoff election should no candidate receive over 50% of the vote in the first election.

While a run-off system would certainly be an improvement over plurality in Pakistan’s fragmented democracy, the problems associated with holding a separate runoff, such as low voter turnout in the runoff election, split votes in preliminary elections, and extra cost, would likely be exacerbated in Pakistan’s unstable political structure. The fundamental flaws of winner-take-all elections would persist, and a runoff would not alleviate the drastic advantage that a winner-take-all system has for larger parties.

Adopting a proportional representation system for Pakistan’s National Assembly would likely be a superior and more comprehensive solution. Given that Pakistan is already familiar with using proportional representation for its Senate and religious minority and women representatives, establishing PR as the electoral system of the entire National Assembly should be achievable. In particular, the use of a ranked choice system like choice voting would allow voters whose votes are currently wasted among the multitude of smaller competing parties to be able to also voice their support for the more dominant parties. As FairVote recently pointed out in relation to elections in Kenya, choice voting would encourage candidates to reach out to voters of different parties, ethnicities, and religions to secure their second-choice votes, improving political dialogue. Finally, proportional representation would eliminate the distorted outcomes that Pakistan has seen in recent elections, increasing the legitimacy of a nascent democracy that needs it desperately in order to survive and flourish.

The significance of the peaceful transition should not be discounted, but Pakistan's democratic enthusiasm should now be directed at reforming the system to foster authentic representation in Pakistan’s National Assembly.

Philippines Holds Elections Using Degree of Proportional Representation

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:23:58 -0700

The results from Monday's midterm elections in the Philippines are in, with President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III's Liberal Party and his ruling coalition "Team PNoy" (named after their leader) coming out on top. Although President Aquino himself was not up for reelection (his 6-year term expires in 2016, after which he may not run again), success in the elections was considered vital for his agenda. In addition to maintaining its control of the House of Representatives, Team PNoy is poised to pick up nine of the 12 contested Senate seats this cycle, making Aquino the first president since the restoration of democracy in 1986 to have majorities in both houses of Congress.

As a former American colony that elects a component of its national legislature using proportional representation, the Philippines' elections are of particular interest. But because of the unusual nature of the proportional seats and the unique characteristics of the politics of the Philippines, few conclusions can be drawn from these elections about how proportional systems could work in other American-style democracies.

The elections in the Philippines come on the heels of a controversial decision by the country's Supreme Court on its party list system, used to elect 20% of the seats in the House of Representatives. Under the terms of the Philippines' 1987 Constitution, 80% of the seats in the House are comprised of single-member geographic districts, with the rest of the seats reserved for at-large party list seats. The party list component of the House does not follow the traditional model of simply giving each party seats in proportion to their nationwide vote share. Instead, the framers of the 1987 Constitution mandated that the party list must represent "labour, peasant, urban poor, indigenous cultural communities, women, youth, and such other sectors as may be provided by law, except the religious sector." The goal of this system, as articulated in a 1995 law, was to "enable Filipino citizens belonging to the marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations and parties... to become members of the House of Representatives."

The results of the party list have been mixed. Because parties running for list seats needed to be independent of the national parties, the system provides the opportunity for marginalized groups to express themselves in government. In reality, however, critics have noted that many of the representatives coming from the PR tier are relatives of the prosperous and well-connected political elite that dominates Philippine society. Nevertheless, the party list has created a small degree of proportional representation and allowed groups representing senior citizens, women, farmers, and others to participate in governance.

The manner in which parties are elected to the PR tier is unique and somewhat complex. All parties that receive 2% or more of the vote receive a seat, although a party receiving 6% or more of the vote is capped at three seats. Since a 2009 Supreme Court ruling, any of the 55 seats in the PR tier that remain are allocated to parties receiving less than 2% of the vote until all seats are filled.

That brings us back to the most recent Supreme Court ruling on April 5^th, 2013, which altered the nature of the PR tier just over a month before the election. The Court ruled that national and regional parties could now run in the party list along with marginalized and underrepresented groups. The Court remanded to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) the petitions of 39 parties that Comelec had previously denied entrance to the party list. Although the major parties, such as Aquino's Liberal Party, may not run directly in the PR tier, the ruling allows for larger parties, potentially affiliated with the major parties, to run in the elections.

Reaction to the ruling has been divided. Unsurprisingly, previously-banned parties that are now allowed to participate, such as the Ako Bicol party, support the ruling, arguing that it provides much-needed reforms and includes safeguards to protect the system from abuse by the rich and powerful. Constitutional scholar and retired justice Vicente Mendoza lauded the decision as well, noting that the intent of the Constitution all along was to open up the party list to non-sectoral groups after a certain amount of time. Criticism of the ruling, however, has been strong as well, with party list groups as well as watchdogs warning that the decision "opened the floodgates for powerful, filthy rich and long-established personalities and groups to infiltrate and dominate the world of real marginalized and underrepresented sectors," as one recent op-ed in the Philippine Daily Inquirer put it.

But a look at the party list winners of Monday's elections shows that the claims of both those supporting and opposing the ruling were likely overstated. The latest vote totals released by Comelec show the Buhay party list in the lead, with a little over a million votes (4.7% of total votes cast). Buhay is a pro-life party founded by the multimillionaire leader of the charismatic Catholic religious group El Shaddai, Mike Velarde, and had been allowed to run and win seats in the 2010 election. Fourth-place finisher Akbayan, meanwhile, has members serving in the executive branch and was explicitly endorsed by President Aquino; it too has been running in the PR tier for years. The Court's ruling did little to affect the underlying fact of the concentration of political power in the elite families of the Philippines, a problem that is by no means unique to the party list. Philippine society on the whole is dominated by celebrities and a handful of political dynasties. The presence of the wealthy elite in the PR tier is less a cause than it is a symptom of deeper problems in the politics of the Philippines.

Consequently, the success or failure of the Philippines' current party list system cannot be used to predict the results of applying proportional representation to other countries currently using winner-take-all, simply because the system itself and the politics surrounding it are so unusual.

Furthermore, there is not an obvious electoral solution to prescribe for the Philippines to address all the unique challenges its political system faces. However, many of the problems that continue to plague elections in the Philippines, such as uncompetitive elections and distorted outcomes, are common in winner-take-all systems. Shifting away from the current party list system, which comprises a small tier that gives a few representatives to minor interests, to a more broadly proportional system that accurately represents all parties, viewpoints, and interests in the nation would likely benefit the Philippines in the long term.

How Districts Plus Has Worked for German Elections

Fri, 03 May 2013 09:44:35 -0700

FairVote has posted several times recently about the benefits that a Districts Plus electoral system (also known as mixed member proportional representation) can confer: namely, combining the advantages of local, personal representation with overall proportionality. But you don't have to take our word for it. Districts Plus-like systems have been proven to be effective in national elections in some of the world's most robust democracies.

Headlining that list is the Federal Republic of Germany, which has used a version of mixed member proportional since the Bundestag was established in 1949 under the guidance of the United States. Germany's current system allows voters to cast two votes: one for a representative in their single-member district, and another for a nationwide party list that will compensate parties for any distortions caused by the single-member districts. Thus, Germans have both local representatives and a parliament that accurately represents the political views of the whole of Germany.

Despite its success, the German electoral system has attracted some undeserved negative attention of late - enough that in November of 2012, Foreign Policy ranked Germany at the bottom of its list of the five electoral systems worse than the Electoral College. But this criticism has been enormously overstated.

Here's the background: on July 25, 2012, Germany's Constitutional Court ruled the current electoral system unconstitutional due to the problem of "overhang seats." It was the second time that the court had declared the system unconstitutional in four years, and it temporarily left Germany without an electoral law.

The issue, in short, was that Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party was winning so many constituency (single-member district) seats that the party list seats were unable to compensate for the distortion. After the 2009 election, the 598-seat Bundestag proportionally reflected the votes that each party received in Germany's states. Because the CDP won more seats via constituencies than its proportion of the vote in several states, however, these extra or "overhang" seats were added to the Bundestag, creating a legislature of 622 seats.

Of course, the extra seats created a small degree of disproportionality in CDP's favor. The overhang seats also led to the unusual phenomenon where voting for a party in a region where they won overhang seats could actually lead to that party winning fewer nationwide seats, which is what the court objected to.

It's worth remembering that these problems only seem significant in the context of an electoral system that is almost completely proportional and in which opportunities for strategic voting are minimal. In the U.S., our distorted and strategy-prone electoral system wouldn't register an issue this miniscule. Given that context, Foreign Policy's dubious honor is absurd.

Fortunately, Germany now seems to have addressed the small flaws in its system, as the Bundestag passed a new electoral law in February that guarantees that parties will receive "balance seats" to compensate for any disproportionality caused by overhang seats. While this new law may result in a larger legislature, it will ensure that the Bundestag more accurately reflects the votes of the German electorate.

The overhang seat controversy has shown that Germany is able to recognize the flaws in its electoral system and correct them. The United States would do well to follow its lead. While a German-style Districts Plus system could not be implemented nationwide in the U.S. without a constitutional amendment, it could realistically be used by many state legislatures that suffer from distorted outcomes and uncompetitive elections. In fact, FairVote has proposed such a plan for the Michigan State House of Representatives.

To be a voter in Germany is to know that your vote will always have an effect on the outcome of an election, regardless of how competitive your local district is. Even when large parties such as the Christian Democrats prevail in the Bundestag elections, other parties and viewpoints are still able to win representation and influence policy. American voters need look no further than Germany to see just how much better their experience with democracy could be.

Winner-Take-All Elections Exacerbate Kenya's Ethnic Tensions

Thu, 02 May 2013 08:49:25 -0700

On March 30th, the Kenyan Supreme Court upheld the election of Uhuru Kenyatta to the Kenyan Presidency, dismissing claims of electoral fraud brought by his primary challenger, Raila Odinga. While the court's decision was met with some protests and scattered reports of violence, these disturbances paled in comparison to the chaos surrounding the 2007-2008 Kenyan electoral crisis, which left over 1,000 people dead and many more injured. The relative peace surrounding this year's contest, along with Odinga's decision to respect the court's ruling instead of calling for mass demonstrations, have led some to declare the 2013 elections a victory for Kenyan democracy.

Still, the election's results demonstrate that politics in Kenya remain highly contentious, with the electorate fracturing sharply along ethnic divides. Despite concerted efforts to push voters away from ethnic politics and towards consideration of the candidates' résumés and policies, the largest parties in the political coalitions that nominated Kenyatta and Odinga are each closely tied to one of Kenya's largest ethnic groups. Kenyatta is Kikuyu, while his running-mate, William Ruto, is Kalenjin. The pair won lopsided victories in areas with majority Kikuyu and Kalenjin populations. Odinga, who is Luo, and his running mate Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, who is Kamba, won by wide margins in Luo and Kamba areas of the country.

These ethnic divides are more salient in Kenyan politics than any regional or ideological differences. As the New York Times noted after this year's election, "some areas voted 95 percent for the politician from their ethnic group, while other areas, equally poor, with people in very similar circumstances, voted 95 percent in the opposite direction." The dominance of these ethnic cleavages is reinforced by the traditional practice of Kenyan leaders rewarding their ethnic constituencies with land, import licenses, and other benefits, to the exclusion of other groups. Though Kenyatta has billed himself as a reformer, there is little evidence that he will depart from this pattern of ethnically-based patronage politics.

Kenya's largely winner-take-all electoral system exacerbates these ethnic tensions in ways that other electoral systems might avoid. Like many former British colonies in East Africa, most of Kenya's legislators (47 of 68 senators, and 337 of 349 members of the National Assembly) are elected through winner-take-all contests in single-member districts. Because Kenyan counties tend to be much more ethnically and politically homogenous than Kenya as a whole (while Kenyatta received just over 50% of the vote nationally, in most districts he received either over 80% or less than 30% of the vote), minority groups in many of these districts stand little chance of ever electing representatives to the Kenyan National Assembly or Senate.

Non-competitive elections like these are a common feature of single-member district systems around the world. Winner-take-all also often leads to distortions between the demographics of the electorate and the composition of government, as has been the case in previous Kenyan elections. For example, in 1992 the Kenyan African National Union party (KANU) won a 53.2% majority of seats in parliament with just a 24.5% share of the popular vote. In 1997, KANU again won a majority of the seats in parliament, this time with 38.4% of the popular vote.

Kenyans of all ethnic groups would be better served if country's newest constitution, adopted in 2010, had abandoned the British tradition of single-member districts and winner-take-all elections in favor of a multi-member district system of proportional representation. If each Kenyan electoral district elected multiple representatives, Kenyans of ethnic groups that are in the minority in their district would still be able to have their voices heard in government, and the potential for continued distortions between the popular vote and government would be reduced.

The single transferable vote method of electing representatives in multimember districts, which FairVote refers to as choice voting, would provide Kenyan politicians with much-needed incentives to reach across ethnic divisions in order to earn high rankings from voters in other groups. This would have a moderating effect on Kenya's polarized ethnic politics, as candidates would be rewarded for broadening their appeal beyond their ethnic base. Instant runoff voting could provide similar benefits in elections for single-seat offices such as the Kenyan presidency by encouraging candidates to build broad coalitions and reach out to their opponents' supporters, potentially reducing the likelihood of future post-election violence.

The tendency of ranked choice systems and proportional representation to foster constructive dialogue and deescalate political tensions should make it an attractive choice not only in the ethnically-polarized Kenya but also in the increasingly dysfunctional and partisan political environment of the United States.

Electoral Reform on the Move in Canada

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:15:17 -0700

Things are looking up for electoral reformers in Canada.

A new poll from Environics, a Canadian research firm, shows that 70% of Canadians would favor a move to proportional representation for Canada's Parliament. That support transcends party lines, with at least 60% of Conservatives, Liberals, and New Democrats preferring any kind of proportional representation to Canada's current winner-take-all system. Respondents identifying with the New Democratic Party, which currently controls nearly a third of seats in the House of Commons, were especially enthusiastic, backing proportional representation at an 82% rate.

FairVote Canada has led the movement for fair voting, and the conversation about serious electoral reform is likely to be particularly relevant in advance of the 2015 elections, as national polls show an electorate split among Canada's three major parties.

And it's not just proportional representation - last week, the Liberal Party held its leadership elections using ranked choice voting. The elections went smoothly, though the winner was never in doubt: Justin Trudeau received over 78% of first choice rankings en route to a landslide victory. Trudeau himself has advocated for using ranked choice voting for the House of Commons, and the Liberal Party as a whole voted last January to support ranked choice voting for all future national elections.

The Liberal Party used a somewhat unconventional method of ranked choice voting in its leadership election, as Trudeau was not elected by direct popular vote. Each Canadian federal district (a "riding") received an equal number of points, and those points were allocated to candidates in each riding in proportion to the number of first choice rankings they received. Had no candidate won a majority of points after the first round of point-allocation (as Trudeau did), the voters who ranked the candidate with the least number of points first would have had their votes transfer to their second choices, giving points to those candidates instead. That process would have continued until a candidate had a majority of points, as in a traditional instant runoff voting election.

Regardless of the added complexity of the point system, however, the Liberal Party's use of ranked choice voting allowed voters to honestly express their preferences on their ballots, preventing any possibility of "spoiler" candidates or a candidate winning with a small plurality of support.

Meanwhile, the movement for ranked choice voting is gaining steam in Toronto, where Dave Meslin is leading an initiative to win RCV for Toronto's mayoral elections. With the backing of FairVote Canada, Meslin's Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (RaBIT) has a strong chance to succeed in advance of the mayoral election in 2014. Toronto is certainly a city in need of voting reform - its current mayor, Rob Ford, won election without a majority of support in 2010.

As the United States makes slow but steady progress toward a fair electoral system, it's nice to see our northern brethren keeping up.

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.

The Future of Egyptian Democracy Hinges on the Fight Over Its Electoral Law

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:20:52 -0700

Over two years since the Arab Spring ousted President Hosni Mubarak and brought the promise of democracy to Egypt, it is clear that that promise is threatened. While most of the media covers the protests and riots in the streets of Cairo and Port Said, the battle that may ultimately decide the fate of Egyptian democracy is being fought over Egypt's new electoral law.

Egypt was scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on April 22, but those elections have now been suspended. The reason is an electoral law passed in January by the Shura Council, Egypt's upper house of parliament, which is now being contested in Egypt's courts.

While it might seem like it would be better for Egypt to have elections under any electoral law rather than postpone them, it is extremely important that Egypt get its electoral system right. An unfair law could create dissatisfaction with the democratic process among Egypt's electorate and harm the progress of democracy in the Middle East.

FairVote has produced a number of analyses on the democratic transitions of Egypt and other countries in the region as part of its Arab Spring Series. As we reported after the last parliamentary elections in 2011-2012, Egypt uses a parallel electoral system in which two-thirds of the legislature is elected using a proportional representation system and the remaining third is elected under winner-take-all rules. The inclusion of proportionally allocated seats had a major effect on the composition of the current Egyptian parliament.

The Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that was banned under Mubarak's regime, received about 37.5% of votes in the last election for the People's Assembly, more than any other party. In the winner-take-all districts, however, their Democracy Alliance coalition won over 65% of the seats - enough for a decisive supermajority in parliament had no other representatives been elected.

With the proportional seats added, the Muslim Brotherhood's share of parliament dropped to 46%. That is still a disproportionate percentage of seats compared to their nationwide support, but it does accurately reflect two important facts about the Egyptian election: 1) The Democracy Alliance had the most popular support of any political bloc, but 2) it did not have a majority of support. The mixed Egyptian electoral system's performance in the in 2011-2012 People's Assembly elections was far from perfect, but it at least prevented the undemocratic event of one group taking control of the body without receiving a majority of votes.

That was not the case in elections for the Shura Council in early 2012, where the Freedom and Justice Party (backed by the Muslim Brotherhood) won 58% of elected seats despite receiving only 45% of the vote under the same parallel system as the lower house. As Egypt's new electoral law was drafted and then adopted by that same Shura Council, it is understandable why Egypt's other parties find the law to be suspect. On February 26, the National Salvation Front, Egypt's primary leftist opposition group, vowed to boycott any elections carried out under the new law.

The new electoral law would not alter the 2:1 ratio of proportional seats to winner-take-all seats while increasing the size of parliament from 508 to 546. But the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have attempted to gain an advantage through gerrymandering Egypt's district map, which is possible both in the winner-take-all districts and in the proportional representation districts. While gerrymandering is typically very difficult with multi-member districts using proportional voting systems, it can be done in Egypt's proportionally elected districts because the ratio of representatives to population is not the same in every district.

The best course for Egypt is to do away with the parallel voting system and transition to a more fully proportional system like those of Germany and New Zealand. That system should have no distortions caused by winner-take-all and a district map such that the number of People's Assembly representatives per citizen in a district is consistent throughout the country. Whatever law Egypt settles on before the next election, though, it is essential that it be fair to all major parties, communities, and interests in Egypt. Otherwise, the legitimacy of Egyptian democracy may be irreversibly damaged.

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.