Category Archives: Elections
Latvia referendum will result in snap election
Unity (Vienotība) Party
Latvian voters on July 23 overwhelmingly voted to dissolve parliament in a special referendum. The referendum was called by then-President Valdis Zatlers in May after their parliament, the Saeima, blocked an anti-corruption investigation against a prominent politician. The results set the stage for snap parliamentary elections on September 17.
Latvia has a unique provision where the president, who is elected indirectly by the Saeima, can call for a special referendum to dissolve the body. If the referendum fails, however, the president must step down. This became a mute point for Zatlers as the Saeima voted him out of office in response to the referendum. Zatlers called the poll just days before the Saeima was scheduled to hold its vote on the next president, and they apparently didn’t respond very well to his move.
Zatlers has already formed a new political party, The Zatlers Reform Party, which is apparently doing quite well in initial polling. A party this large emerging in a few months is likely to shake up the country’s party system, which has already undergone some major shifts in the past few weeks.
In a direct reference to the country’s most popular political force, meanwhile, LPP/LC — also center-right — has officially renamed itself Slesers’ Reform Party. Ainars Slesers, widely known as one of the country’s three “oligarchs”, is also the party’s candidate for prime minister. The ruling Unity political coalition, meanwhile, has officially declared itself a single party and re-nominated current Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis as their candidate for the next head of government.
Other parties and alliances in Lativa include Harmony Centre, which mostly represents ethnic Russians, and The Union of Greens and Farmers, who are a rare alliance between a Green movement and populist agrarians that actually place them on the right of the political spectrum.
Egyptian SCAF unveils new electoral system
Egyptian Army council General Mamdouh Shahin announced on Wednesday final amendments to the country’s electoral law. The new system has a lot in common with what I previously wrote about, with some key changes. Under the new system, fifty percent of seats in the lower house of parliament, the People’s Assembly, will be awarded through closed-list proportional representation, while the other half will be awarded in two-seat districts. This is a change from the draft law the SCAF put out where only one third of seats would be PR. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the extremely low threshold for entering parliament, which was placed at 1/2 of all national votes.
The new law also abolishes the 64 seats reserved for women, which was instituted before the last election in 2010. In its place is a provision that mandates every party list must include at least one female. Other changes in the law include lowering the age for candidate eligibility from 30 to 25, and stipulating that elections take place in three stages.
I can think of three major implications of the new laws. Let’s start with the new PR tier. The ordinal tier of seats will be divided into 58 constituencies, which for 252 seats (half of the 504 elected members) will create an average district magnitude of 4.3 That’s not very proportional; combined with the two seat districts this system still looks very majoritarian. This makes the .5% threshold all the more bizarre. As far as I know this would make Egypt’s threshold the lowest in the world, even more so than neighboring Israel. While Israel’s one nationwide district allows for extreme party fragmentation, however, I don’t think Egypt’s threshold will have much impact. Maybe Egypt’s planners read Carey and Hix’s recent paper, The Electoral Sweet Spot: Low-Magnitude Proportional Electoral Systems. In the paper, the authors, find an optimal district magnitude – around three to eight seats – which produces low party fragmentation while still retaining a level of proportionality associated with higher seats per district. This sort of assumes, however, that the other half of seats aren’t awarded in the strange two-seat districts that Egypt’s will be.
The second, somewhat related point, is the impact this system will have on women’s representation. Mandating one candidate per list be female is a weak stipulation. With no requirement for where on the list the women has to be, it will be easy for a party to bury women at the bottom of their lists. This incentive will only increase in small magnitude districts as it will become more likely that only the top one or two candidates will be elected.
As far as the three stages for elections go, I think this is also a bad idea. The fear I have with this is it will give parties an incentive to call for a boycott after the first stage if they don’t like the results. This could have the effect of delegitimizing an otherwise well-conducted election. (I’m not assuming it will be of course).
Presidential elections in Sao Tome and Principe
Manuel Pinto da Costa, the former one-party ruler of Sao Tome and Principe, captured enough votes last Sunday to move on to the second round of the country’s presidential election. Costa, who is running as an independent candidate, will face Parliamentary speaker Evaristo de Carvalho in the runoff. Costa ruled Sao Tome and Principe from the country’s 1975 independence from Portugal, to 1990. Carvalho, a former prime minister, is the candidate of the Independent Democratic Action (ADI) party, which won last year’s parliamentary election. The runoff will be held on August 7.
Norway Blogging
Blogging has been light lately due to some travel. I’m in Norway right now, where I came to meet with a team that will be evaluating the country’s internet voting project. In September, ten municipalities will be piloting an option where voters can cast ballots through the internet. (Twenty municipalities are also piloting allowing anyone over 16 years old to vote). There’s a lot to be said about internet voting and I won’t get into that now, but I will say that voting over the internet creates a number of challenges for maintaining such standards as a secret ballot and auditablity. With that being said, the Norwegian plan to accommodate these standards is very complex (too much so to explain here) but also well-thought out.
As far as random Norway facts go, I though I would share the following one about the Norwegian parliament. Seating arrangements in Parliament are made by constituency, not party affiliation like in most chambers. I’m guessing this was designed to promote inter-party cooperation but I doubt, given the little floor time of Norwegian MPs, it makes much difference.
Seat in Parliament (Photo property of David Jandura)
Wafd and Brotherhood form electoral alliance
From my friend Heba Fahmy, comes this story of the neo-liberal al-Wafd Party forming an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. Naturally, this has drawn some heavy criticism.
The FEP, headed by business tycoon Naguib Sawiris, said it didn’t want to turn the upcoming People’s Assembly elections into “second class” elections, where political powers force their guardianship over the people through a unified list, instead of having free direct elections.
Al-Wafd and the MB have actually formed an alliance before, in the 1984 parliamentary elections. At that time, Egypt used a Closed-list PR system with an extremely high threshold; a party or alliance needed eight percent of the national vote in order to enter parliament. This caused all non-NDP parties to form strange alliances in an effort to simply meet that number and gain any seats at all. At that time, Wafd was mostly free-riding off of the MB’s grassroots support and the Brotherhood was willing to tell its supporters to cast votes for a disproportionate amount of Wafd candidates. Given that they were formally banned as a party, I guess they felt this was their best option.
Present day, however, the MB is running under their newly formed Justice and Freedom Party, and will have considerably more leverage in the relationship. For the life of me, I can’t understand why Wafd would do this. They are technically one of the most popular parties, but that’s only because support for parties is so low. (The recent IRI survey placed Wafd in first place with just six percent of respondents claiming it’s their preferred organization) This certainly isn’t the action of a party that, as its leader Al-Sayed Al-Badawy claimed, are the most powerful in the country. Wafd had already damaged its creditably with its willingness to serve as the NDP’s chosen opposition in the 2010 election. I’m guessing this will not win them many more supporters.
Malta legalizes divorce
Citizens of Malta on Saturday voted in a referendum on whether or not to legalize divorce. The heavily Catholic Malta is currently the only European country where divorce is still banned, and apparently one of the last in the world. Official results show that 53 percent of the Mediterranean island’s voters were in favor of the measure, which asked whether parliament should pass a law allowing couples to divorce after four years of separation. The referendum was non-binding; parliament is still required to pass a new law, but the prime minister has indicated he will respect the wishes of the people despite his personal opposition. One of my favorite arguments by the anti-legalization side was that legalizing divorce would not help deal with abusive husbands because that would just allow the man to move on to another women. Not sure how you make that argument with a straight face, but luckily it didn’t work. I imagine this is one case of direct democracy where a number of people’s lives will significantly improve in a observable and immediate fashion. Good for Malta.
Philippines bill would temper incumbency advantage
The PhilStar is reporting on a bill in the Philippines that would force candidates to resign from their current office to run for another one. The objective of the bill is said to prevent incumbents from using government resources to promote their candidacy.
His [Rep. Joseph Victor Ejercito] proposal was prompted by the congressional candidacy in the May 2010 elections of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Ejercito said.
“Mrs. Arroyo, ignoring warnings that she would demean the presidency, ran for representative in Pampanga’s second district without turning over the seat of power to then Vice President Noli de Castro.”
Makes sense, although it reminds me of a California-style effort at electoral engineering -the kind that never works out. There have been a lot of good bills in the Filipino Congress that have died, so here’s hoping this one goes somewhere.
Egypt will not use automated voting system for next election
Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which is apparently in Smart Village, a PPP town on the outskirts of Cairo.
Al Ahram is now reporting that Egypt will not use an electronic voting system for the upcoming elections.
Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Maged Othman announced in a press conference today that Egypt will not use electronic voting in the next presidential election.
Othman said electronic voting is currently too costly and requires extensive preparation to ensure the voting process is transparent and everyone is able to vote.
Othman also said Egypt will begin manufacturing the machines needed for electronic voting instead of importing them from overseas.
He added that currently the ministry is preparing the voting lists for the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. The minister also said that Egyptians will be able to vote using their national ID cards both in Egypt and overseas and that Egyptian embassies will oversee the voting process outside of Egypt.
This seems like pretty good news all around. The ability for expats to vote, in particular is more than feasible and there was no great reason not to do it. I previously expressed my doubts about an electronic election process, but that was mainly when I was unsure of whether internet voting was a potential. I think Egypt is more than capable of a well-done automated election, but it takes time – more than a few months – to choose a system, ensure it works, train poll workers how to use, etc.
I’ve stated before that the debate over the merits of election technology is largely unimportant. Technology is a tool, not an independent actor. In most cases it amplifies intent; both deficiencies and capabilities become more apparent. Whether Egypt ultimately decides to use automated machines or paper ballots is less important than how they decide to structure their Election Management Body, and how well they administer their elections.
Tunisian official proposes delaying elections to Oct 16
Not terribly surprising considering they haven’t worked out any details of the next election.
Ethnic party formation in Estonia
The Estonian Centre Party (Eesti Keskerakond)
The OSCE/ODIHR has just released its assessment of February’s Riigikogu elections. The report devotes considerable discussion to Estonia’s internet voting system, which I’ve previously talked about. Also in the report is a discussion of the state of minority Russians in Estonia. Although technically twenty-six percent of the population, Russians are underrepresented in politial life. In fact, only ten percent of the previous parliaments’ MPs belonged to any minority at all. Furthermore, strict citizenship laws that requre Estonian lanaguage skills mean a large portion of Russians are not even allowed to vote.
Political parties made varying degrees of effort to include persons belonging to national minorities on their candidate lists and to reach out to Russian-speaking voters. One party that explicitly identified itself along ethnic lines did not meet the five per cent threshold. Estonia’s public broadcaster aired some election debates in Russian on TV and radio, while political parties and some individual candidates issued campaign materials in both Estonian and Russian. Issues related to national minorities did not feature prominently in the campaign.
Prior to the elections, the Estonian Cooperation Assembly/Roundtable of Nationalities, a network of civil society organizations, issued an appeal to election contestants and the public to take a more constructive approach to Estonia’s ethnic and linguistic diversity.
Estonia’s party system has been extremely unstable since its independence. Russians initially formed ethnic parties such as the Estonian United People’s Party and managed to gain some representation in parliament. In the last decade, however, ethnic Russian voters started to move their support to non-ethnic, mainstream parties such as the Centre Party and Reform Party. While the latter two haven’t made their platforms extremely Russian friendly – Reform favors stricter citizenship laws than exist now – they have both included significantly more ethnic Russians on their party lists. It’s interesting that mainstream elites have wanted, and been able, to recruit ethnic Russians into their parties. I’m guessing – although open to being corrected – that poor organization and performance of the ethnic parties allowed this to happen. It probably also doesn’t hurt that there are so many ethnic Russians in the country (lots of votes!). It’s my general observation that once ethnic parties become institutionalized, it’s rare for their voters to move to a different party. Estonia might provide a great research design for anybody looking at the impact of strong ethnic parties as the country now has a time series change regarding their salience.
Ahwa Talk 