FIGURE 2: GRADATIONS OF GENDER BALANCE
ON LISTS
Professor Robert Hazell and Joshua Payne
Lessons from European Parliament elections about
open and closed lists and STV
This note has been compiled by Joshua Payne, graduate
of Essex University, with help from 30 academic experts across
Europe. We are very grateful for their help
Background
As part of their plans for reform of the House of
Lords, the coalition government are considering proposals on the
electoral system for an elected second chamber (Cabinet Office
2011: 13-16). The principal choice lies within list systems of
PR, including STV, open lists and closed lists. There is academic
literature about the theoretical differences between these systems,
but rather less about how they operate in practice. One of the
best forums for studying how the different kinds of list systems
work in practice is the European Parliament, which provides a
wide range of different experience.
The EU stipulates that countries must use proportional
representation, but there is immense variation within the broad
category. Some countries (like Great Britain) use closed lists,
in which voters can vote only for a party, not individual candidates.
Some use open lists, allowing voters to choose between individual
candidates. STV is a particularly open type of open list. Some
countries use semi-open lists, restricting voters' individual
preferences in different ways.
This note covers several aspects of how the electoral
systems for MEPs work. The most important is how countries count
individual and party votes; but it also covers gender balance,
and by-elections. We make several arguments. First, political
culture is the strongest determinant of how much voters utilise
preferential voting, instead of simply voting for a party list.
Second, the benefits of STV may be exaggerated. Third, division
of the country into regions for voting by regional lists needs
special care.
The note makes frequent reference to 'preferential
voting', a feature of open list systems. A preferential vote allows
an elector to choose between individual candidates of the same
party, or to change the rank order in which they are listed on
the ballot paper. Voters can mark their preference in different
ways, circling the names, marking them, or writing in the candidates'
electoral numbers.
Closed lists
Closed list systems are those where the parties put
forward a list of candidates in their own rank order, and where
voters are unable to express any individual preferences. Given
that voters can only choose a party, the voting procedure can
be simple. Closed lists are used in France, Germany, Great Britain,
Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Spain, and Romania (Estonia switched
from open to closed lists for the 2009 election, but there are
now moves to switch back. Finland has also seen demands for a
switch from open to closed lists). The member states with closed
lists elect just over half of the 736 MEPs. A candidate must appear
high up in the party's ranking to obtain a seat. Just how high
will depend upon the party system, i.e., the pattern of party
competition and one party's chances of success relative to another.
Structuring choices
Even where preferential voting is possible, it is
standard practice for voters also to have the choice of endorsing
a party's list as a whole. Only in Finland are voters constrained
by having a preference vote for a candidate and no other option.
Studies have considered, as a central question, how often the
preferential vote option is used (Seyd 1998: 4-6). This is affected
by two other things: whether parties can present their candidates
in rank order on the ballot paper; and whether there is a threshold.
In most countries parties use their own rank order; but in Finland,
Luxembourg and Cyprus names appear in alphabetical order. Likewise,
the STV countries—Malta and Ireland—stipulate unprompted,
alphabetical ordering.
Finland, Luxembourg, Italy, Latvia and Cyprus are
at one end of the spectrum of open list systems, in that preference
votes are fundamental to the count, but in all cases except the
Finnish it is still possible just to select a list. In
these five countries, those candidates who receive the most preference
votes become MEPs. Each vote for an individual candidate becomes
slightly more influential, in the contest between candidates of
the same party, when more voters decide to back an entire list
instead.
In other countries, preference votes are less powerful.
One reason for this is a different counting method, which involves
a threshold. A threshold for preference votes applies in the Netherlands,
Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Austria. For example, to achieve
election as an MEP an Austrian candidate must obtain no fewer
than 7% of the votes for their list. This use of restrictive rules
is one factor which influences voters' ability to change the parties'
rank order.
Overall, in Western and Northern Europe, it is uncommon
for candidates to win a seat owing to preference votes upsetting
the parties' rank order. In Austria, this applied to only one
candidate in the two last European Parliament elections; in Sweden,
to two candidates in 2009; and in the Netherlands, to three candidates
in 2009. The Italian experience is more mixed, partly because
there is no threshold for preference votes. The Danish system
has a more restrictive threshold, yet Denmark also defies the
overall pattern since it is more common here for voters to achieve
a change of order. Political culture and socialisation play a
strong role in determining how effectively voters can and will
use preference votes.
Open lists
The majority of the EU member states use the open
list system. They are more numerous than the closed list countries
but smaller in size. Figure 1 below classifies them along two
key dimensions. Voters can have a single preference vote, or more
than one. The second dimension—'impact'—is a measure
of how much electors can, as discussed above, disrupt a party's
rank order (or express a meaningful choice where the order is
alphabetical).
FIGURE 1: TYPOLOGY OF OPEN LIST SYSTEMS
In Italy a voter can have 1, 2 or 3 preference votes,
depending on the region they live in.
Previous studies have argued that open lists generally
make little difference. Voters can still vote for a list as a
whole, and previous studies have shown that many voters do (Seyd
1998: 4-6). But Seyd was only able to consider Western Europe.
2004 saw the entry of the Eastern European countries into the
EU, and in these countries voters are considerably more likely
to use preference votes. For example, in Poland, the second best
position for a candidate to be is last on the list, rather than
second. A large number of voters deliberately select the candidate
least favoured by their party.
The experience of other East European states has
been similar. In 2009 the Slovakian electorate made considerable
use of its ability to disrupt the parties' order of candidates,
"declassifying" candidates at the top of the list and
moving up many of those in the lower positions (Henderson 2009:
10; Macháèek
2009: 65). It is not safe
to conclude that preferential votes are not worth giving to electorates
because they might not use them. There is a big difference in
the extent of their use between Western and Eastern Europe. Sometimes
preferential votes are inconsequential as voters give them to
candidates at the top of parties' rank order. This suggests that
variations in political culture explain the differences -'culture'
affects how much voters in a country trust parties' own decisions
about their figureheads.
The Single Transferable Vote (STV)
European Parliament elections do not provide extensive
evidence on the use of STV. There are only three cases to examine:
Malta, the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. Together, these
countries elect only 20 out of the 736 MEPs. Under STV, voters
indicate their favour for candidates by numbering them 1, 2, 3
etc. in order of preference. They can number all their preferences
for candidates of the same party (very common in Malta), or split
their numbering between individuals with different affiliations
(more common in Ireland). One important issue is the number
of candidates each party offers relative to the number of seats
the party is contesting. In Ireland parties always put forward
fewer candidates than there are seats available—usually
one and occasionally two names, for three-member constituencies.
In Malta, the two main parties each put forward roughly double
the number of candidates relative to seats.
The Coalition government's draft legislation refers
to STV and its operation at several points. Elections for a second
chamber of 240 members will occur in rounds, with election in
thirds, and division of the UK into 12 regions (Cabinet Office
2011: 15). The regions will not contain the same number of seats,
but the average—80 divided by 12—is about 6.5 For
European Parliament elections in the UK, which also use 12 regions,
the average size of a region is six seats (the smallest region
has three seats and the largest has 10). In contrast, the Irish
Republic divides itself into four regions, with three MEPs for
each; Malta has five MEPs in a single national constituency, and
Northern Ireland three. Large regions with more than three to
five seats could lead to very long ballot papers, and lengthy
counting procedures: especially if parties were to put forward
double the number of candidates relative to seats. This could
happen for two reasons. First, parties often compete with each
other to provide the same breadth of choice of candidates to voters.
Second, STV is based on votes transferring between candidates
in rounds. As Malta's election results show when examined closely,
the provision of a very wide range of candidates can be desirable
for a party under STV, as long as there is infrequent 'split ticket'
voting. Long lists of candidates would include 'sweeper' candidates
whose real purpose would be to direct lower preferences to a party's
key players.
'Zipping': ensuring equal representation of the
genders?
The electoral data from the 2004 and 2009 European
Parliament elections show that STV is unlikely to produce gender
balance. In this respect, party list systems may be preferable.
The list structure provides the possibility of alternating male
and female candidates in a party's sequence ('zipping'). The data
show that pure forms of zipping are rare, but that there are many
gradations to ensure balanced representation: see Figure 2. Most
countries do not impose stringent rules. The French have legislation
to ensure a strict alternation of male and female candidates,
but parties can choose whether the head of a list is male or female.
Sometimes the parties make their own rules (as in Sweden for instance)
and sometimes legislation imposes requirements about the overall
proportion of women, independently from requirements about alternation.
By-election arrangements
It is uncommon for countries to make provision for
by-elections if an MEP no longer takes up a seat. The administration
for by-elections is expensive, especially when they have to cover
large geographical areas. The usual practice is for the candidate
who has the next place on the list to take up the seat. Sometimes
party lists have to include a number of substitutes. In Malta
there is provision for a contest, but this involves redistribution
of the votes for the candidate no longer in the Parliament. The
most common practice is to utilise data from the previous election
rather than initiate a new contest.
Number of regions, and length of party lists
Parties' willingness to put forward more candidates
than there are seats is not only a feature of STV, but can also
happen with open lists. For instance, in Lithuania, with 13 seats
for MEPs, the legal rules stipulate that parties can put forward
a maximum of double that number of candidates. All the parties
competing in Lithuania seem to do this (Lithuanian Central Electoral
Commission 2004). Once one party puts forward more candidates,
other parties tend to follow suit, to keep up their image.
This links to regionalisation and the number of regional
constituencies (see below). The government's proposals involve
constituencies for STV which are probably too large, especially
if parties were to offer more candidates than there are seats.
One alternative would be more and smaller regions, with a slightly
less proportional system. Smaller regions would retain the key
strength of STV, which is the ability to make all votes count
towards the election of a winning candidate. Another solution
would be to limit the length of party lists.
Conversion formulae of votes into seats
Electoral systems use formulae which convert percentage
vote shares into seats for each party. Such formulae are simply
mathematical functions which convert one set of numbers into another.
The D'Hondt formula, which divides the number of votes for each
party by a series of divisors in rounds, is much the most common
for European Parliament elections. Latvia and Sweden use the Sainte-Laguë
method, whose basic concept is the same as for D'Hondt. The choice
of the formula does not appear to interact with preferential voting.
The majority of countries use D'Hondt, and this is irrespective
of whether they are Western, Northern or Eastern European, or
how much choice they give to voters.
Italy, Greece, Lithuania, Slovakia and Cyprus use
the highest remainder method. They do not differ much from countries
using divisor methods in terms of proportionality. But individual
votes become more valuable in the final rounds of allocation,
when small parties can compete convincingly with the 'remainder'
piles of votes for larger parties, making it easier for 'minor'
parties to gain seats.
Regions
The requirement for parties to win a strong vote
share specifically within a region is unusual. This occurs only
in Great Britain and France. In most cases entire nations form
single constituency units. Spain is a single constituency for
electing its 50 MEPs, as are countries such as Sweden and Finland.
In Italy and Poland, there is division into regions for the purposes
of fielding candidates and for counting preferential votes, but
party success depends on the sum of votes across all the
regions. In France, the government created eight regions as part
of a plan to engage voters, but this has done nothing to arrest
falling turnout. The electorate did not identify with the regional
units.
Conclusion
The evidence shows in general that, under list PR
with rank ordering in Western European countries, voters rarely
succeed in altering the parties' rank order. Any preference voting
needs good political knowledge about individual candidates, so
many voters won't use this option. The UK is more likely to follow
the Western European pattern. But differences in political attitudes
and methods of counting votes can make it difficult to predict
how much impact preference voting might have.
Too much consideration may have been given to STV.
The advantages are not as clear as many people assume, and STV
merges into open lists. The government's proposed constituencies
would be too large for STV, especially if the parties were to
offer more candidates than there are seats. A possible alternative
could be the 'cumulative vote' system of list PR available in
Luxembourg, where voters can give two votes to a candidate whom
they particularly favour, and can also vote across party lines.
A design where some preference votes have double the value of
others could interest the electorate and aid contenders whom party
hierarchies don't favour. But as with the wider debates about
STV, a system which potentially favours party outsiders and independents
is unlikely to find favour with the parties themselves.
1 February 2012
References
Cabinet Office and Office of the Deputy Prime Minister(2011)
Draft Legislation on House of Lords Reform (London: TSO).
Available at: http://www.dpm.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files_dpm/resources/house-of-lords-reform-draft-bill.pdf.
Retrieved 15 October 2011.
Henderson, Karen (2009) The 2009 European Parliament
election in Slovakia, 6 June 2009 (Leicester: EPERN).
Lithuania, Central Electoral Commission of the Republic
of (2004). Sample ballot paper available to view at: http://www3.lrs.lt/rinkimai/2004/euro/biuletenis_e.htm,
retrieved 3 November 2011.
Macháèek, Ladislav
(2009) 'Electoral Behaviour of Students—First-Time
Voters in the European Election'. Slovak Journal of Political
Sciences 11(1).
Seyd, Ben (1998) Elections Under Regional Lists:
A guide to the new system for electing MEPs (London: UCL and
The Constitution Unit).
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