PROPORTIONALITY, DISTRICTING AND OPEN LISTS How to reconcile them? Author: Leon Malazogu

Aim  To analyze the distribution of seats given:  7 multi-member districts  Open lists (within districts)  Single vote choice  Gender quota of 30%  Threshold of 5% (does not apply to political entities representing ethnic communities) 2

Principles  Ranked In order of priority  Must Proportionality Representation of communities Gender representation  Desirable Direct accountability Geographic representation  Not all principles can be met. Search for the best trade-off 3

Reconciling proportionality & districting  Main Principle: strict nation-wide proportionality  Trade-off at the expense of district proportionality  After consideration of many options, the most superior is the combination of seats to be elected at district level and compensatory seats to compensate nation-wide proportionality  Some countries draw up a separate compensatory (closed) list, but we decided to draw the compensatory candidates from the district list 4

General Parameters  Assume there are 6 parties in total contesting elections  Example party results  Total ballots, like in 2007 elections 5

Using Example Figures Advantages  Large discrepancies that rarely occur in reality  Disproportionate concentration of some parties in some districts  Disproportionate strength of leaders  Disproportionate concentration of votes for women candidates in some regions/parties  Very different turn-out  … Disadvantages  Only 6 parties, missing very small ones 6

Determining total number of seats  And so it continues, until all seats have been distributed The votes are divided by 1, 3, 5, … 7

Breakdown of seats  Party F is dropped as it does not pass the threshold  Four more seats are granted to other political entities, according to the same formula 8

Calculating the size of districts  Total electorate: 1,567,690  Divided by 70 seats  Yields 22,396 voters represented by one Member of Parliament  Divide electorate of each regional/district by district magnitude (22,396)  Then calculate and rank largest remainders  Adding the above yields the total share of each district in the Assembly of Kosovo 9

Calculating the size of districts  A: Share of district  B: Share of district (full integer)  C: Largest Remainder  D: Seats to the district 10

What data to use?  The 70/30 ratio should be fixed (could also be 75/25)  But distribution of the 70 seats should not be fixed  It should reflect the size of the district to give it adequate power in the Assembly  It is preferable to use population data  For as long as these are not satisfactory, it is better to use voters lists, ideally determine the size 6 months ahead of elections  In case of early elections, use data from previous elections 11

Seven different elections?  The same calculation for every district, treating them as separate election 12

Sample figures: Prishtina  Intentional huge variations (among parties and districts)  As realistic data as possible 13

Calculation of party seats  Same procedure for determining the number of seats per party within the district  As Party F did not pass the threshold, the only seat that it would have won in a district, is added to the compensatory seats. 14

Who exactly?  Start from the highest  18,000  13,200 ……  Party A: 7 seats …… 15

District mandates to individuals  Do the same for each region  Gender rule enforced within each district, as in the last elections at the Kosovo-wide level 16

District Threshold  One reason why even large districts have a mild majoritarian effect is that their natural threshold is larger than the 5% national threshold. The natural threshold at the national level is 1%. 17

District and National Proportionality  Districts produce proportional results for each district.  As districts are large, they produce largely proportional results as nation-wide results, but not strictly so.  Discrepancies between strict proportional and regional proportional are presented below:  Factoring in Kosovo’s 4 minority seats would have further increased this gap 18

An example of a smaller district  Given Ferizaj’s 7 seats, Party F with 6.3% and Party E with 1.5% would not pass the natural threshold.  The smaller the districts, small parties lose more 19

The Best Trade-off  The totals were?  Key challenge: to balance nation-wide proportionality and district representation  Hence the compensation seats  How many left to compensate? 20  Seats awarded from the districts:

Gender Representation at the District  Due to the smaller lists being contested, less likely to win by merit  9 more women needed to satisfy the quota  The compensatory seats would have to draw 9 candidates of the less represented gender, along the others 21

Compensation Mechanism  Multiple role to compensate for:  Party proportionality  Gender quota  Size: (here taken 30) seats to compensate for loss of proportionality at the district level  A parallel list is not a good idea. It is better to draw the next 30 candidates with most votes, regardless of the district  Row one: the number of women elected from the districts.  Row two: the number of women to ensure that the 30% quota was met  Last row: number of women to be elected from the compensatory seats 22

The compensatory seats and gender  Final distribution of the compensatory seats looks as following:  Of the compensatory seats, the table above illustrates the gender breakdown  The distribution of seats to the less represented gender yielded the following table  Only Party D has met the quota at the district level already 23

Final Distribution Sample: Prishtina  17 MPs directly (one less due to the F Party)  7 additional MPs drawn from Prishtina to fulfill overall proportionality 24

What if?  What if two candidates within the same district have the same number of votes, and happen to be 8 th and 9 th when eight seats are contested?  Response: Both are elected, and compensatory seats are subtracted by one 25

Other Issues Pertaining to this Matter  Candidate Eligibility  … 26

Any Questions?  Written inquiries to:  Copyright Leon Malazogu 27