Closed list

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Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can effectively vote for only political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some influence, that would be called an open list. Closed list systems are still commonly used in party-list proportional representation, and most mixed electoral systems also use closed lists in their party list component. Many countries, however have changed their electoral systems to use open lists to incorporate personalised representation to their proportional systems.

Contents

In closed list systems, each political party has pre-decided who will receive the seats allocated to that party in the elections, [1] so that the candidates positioned highest on this list tend to always get a seat in the parliament while the candidates positioned very low on the closed list will not. However, the candidates "at the water mark" of a given party are in the position of either losing or winning their seat depending on the number of votes the party gets. "The water mark" is the number of seats a specific party can be expected to achieve. The number of seats that the party wins, combined with the candidates' positions on the party's list, will then determine whether a particular candidate will get a seat.

List of countries using closed list systems

Countries using closed-lists as of 2022 in the electoral system of their legislature (unicameral, or lower chamber)
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Proportional representation: countries where all parties use a closed-list
Proportional representation: countries where only some parties use a closed-list
Mixed-member proportional systems with closed-lists
Mixed-member majoritarian representation with closed-lists Closelist PR 2020.svg
Countries using closed-lists as of 2022 in the electoral system of their legislature (unicameral, or lower chamber)
  Proportional representation: countries where all parties use a closed-list
  Proportional representation: countries where only some parties use a closed-list
  Mixed-member proportional systems with closed-lists
  Mixed-member majoritarian representation with closed-lists

Proportional representation

Mixed electoral systems

Mixed electoral system using closed lists for the proportional component

Majoritarian representation

Party block voting (general ticket) with a closed list

See also

Related Research Articles

Proportional representation (PR) refers to any type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions among voters. The essence of such systems is that all votes cast – or almost all votes cast – contribute to the result and are effectively used to help elect someone. Under other election systems, a bare plurality or a scant majority are all that are used to elect candidates. Further, a PR system is one that produces mixed and balanced representation, reflecting how votes are cast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Party-list proportional representation</span> Family of voting systems

Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a system of proportional representation based on preregistered political parties, with each party being allocated a certain number of seats roughly proportional to their share of the vote.

Single non-transferable vote or SNTV is an electoral system used to elect multiple winners. It is a semi-proportional variant of first-preference plurality, applied to multi-member districts where each voter casts just one vote. SNTV generally makes it unlikely that a single party will take over all seats in a city, as generally happens with winner-take-all systems. SNTV is highly similar to cumulative voting, and can be considered a variant of dot voting where each voter has only one point to assign.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Additional-member system</span> Mixed electoral system with compensation

The additional-member system (AMS) or is a mixed electoral system under which most representatives are elected in single-member districts (SMDs), and a fixed number of other "additional members" are elected to make the seat distribution in the chamber more proportional to the way votes are cast for party lists. It is distinct from parallel voting in that the "additional member" seats are awarded to parties taking into account seats won in SMDs, which is not done under parallel voting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mixed-member proportional representation</span> Type of mixed electoral system

Mixed-member proportional representation is a mixed electoral system which combines local winner-take-all elections with a compensatory tier of party list votes, which are used to allocate additional members in a way that aims to produce proportional representation overall. In typical MMP systems, voters get two votes: one to decide the representative for their single-seat constituency, and one for a political party. Some countries use single vote variants of MMP, although this article focuses primarily on dual vote versions of MMP.

Block or bloc voting refers to a class of electoral systems where multiple candidates are elected simultaneously. They do not guarantee minority representation and allow a group of voters to ensure that only their preferred candidates are elected. In these systems, a voter can select as many candidates as there are open seats. That is, the voter has as many votes to cast as the number of seats to fill. The block voting systems are among various election systems available for use in multi-member districts where the voting system allows for the selection of multiple winners at once.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First-past-the-post voting</span> Plurality voting system

First-preference plurality (FPP)—often shortened simply to plurality—is a single-winner system of positional voting. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, and the candidate with the largest number of marks is elected, even if they do not have more than half of the marks. When used in single-member districts, the method is often called first-past-the-post (FPTP), based on a metaphor from horse racing.

In political science, parallelvoting or superposition refers to the use of two or more electoral systems to elect different members of a legislature. More precisely, an electoral system is a superposition if it is a mixture of at least two tiers, which do not interact with each other in any way; one part of a legislature is elected using one method, while another part is elected using a different method, with all voters participating in both. Thus, the final results can be found by calculating the results for each system separately based on the votes alone, then adding them together. A system is called fusion or majority bonus, another independent mixture of two system but without two tiers. Superposition is also not the same as "coexistence", which when different districts in the same election use different systems. Superposition, fusion and coexistence are distinct from dependent mixed electoral systems like compensatory (corrective) and conditional systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open list</span> Personalized list proportional voting system

Open list describes any variant of party-list proportional representation where voters have at least some influence on the order in which a party's candidates are elected. This is as opposed to closed list, in which party lists are in a predetermined, fixed order by the time of the election and gives the general voter no influence at all on the position of the candidates placed on the party list.

A list MP is a member of parliament (MP) elected from a party list rather than from a geographic electoral district. The place in Parliament is due to the number of votes that the party won, not to votes received by the MP personally. This occurs only in countries which have an electoral system based wholly or partly on party-list proportional representation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elections in Romania</span>

Romania elects on a national level a head of state – the president – and a legislature. The president is elected for a five-year term by the people. The Romanian Parliament has two chambers. The Chamber of Deputies has currently 330 members, elected for a four-year term by party-list proportional representation on closed lists. The Senate has currently 136 members, elected for a four-year term by party-list proportional representation on closed lists.

A party-list system is a type of electoral system that formally involves political parties in the electoral process, usually to facilitate multi-winner elections. In party-list systems, parties put forward a list of candidates, the party-list who stand for election on one ticket. Voters can usually vote directly for the party-list, but in other systems voters may vote for directly individuals candidates within or across party lists, besides or instead of voting directly for parties.

Block plurality voting is a winner-take-all method for multi-winner elections. Each voter may cast as many votes as the number of seats to be filled. The usual result when the candidates divide into parties is that the most popular party in the district sees its full slate of candidates elected.

Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electoral system</span> Method by which voters make a choice between options

An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, non-profit organisations and informal organisations. These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the result. Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws, are typically conducted by election commissions, and can use multiple types of elections for different offices.

A winner-take-all electoral system is one where a voting bloc can win all seats in a legislature or electoral district, denying representation to any political minorities. Such systems are used in many major democracies. Such systems are sometimes called "majoritarian representation", though this term is a misnomer, as most such systems do not always elect majority preferred candidates and do not always produce winners who received majority of votes cast in the district, and they allow parties to take a majority of seats in the chamber with just a minority of the vote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mixed electoral system</span> Family of voting systems

A mixed electoral system or mixed-member electoral system combines methods of majoritarian and proportional representation (PR). The majoritarian component is usually first-past-the-post voting (FPTP/SMP), whereas the proportional component is most often based on party-list PR. The results of the combination may be mixed-member proportional (MMP), where the overall results of the elections are proportional, or mixed-member majoritarian, in which case the overall results are semi-proportional, retaining disproportionalities from the majoritarian component.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rural–urban proportional representation</span> Canadian hybrid proportional electoral system

Rural–urban proportional representation (RUP), also called flexible district PR, is a mixed electoral system which combines the use of single- and multi-member constituencies in a lower tier and top-up seats in an upper tier to meet the different needs of both rural and urban areas, while protecting the objective of proportionality. The term was coined by Fair Vote Canada, which devised a rural–urban system with the intention of meeting the special challenges of Canada's geography, which includes wide-flung, sparsely populated areas.

The mixed single vote (MSV) or positive vote transfer system (PVT) is a mixed-member electoral system, where voters cast a single vote in an election, which used both for electing a local candidate and as a vote for a party affiliated with that candidate according to the rules of the electoral system. Unlike the more widespread mixed proportional and mixed majoritarian systems where voters cast two votes, split-ticket voting is not possible in MSV.

Mixed-member majoritarian representation (MMM) is type of a mixed electoral system combining winner-take-all and proportional methods, where the disproportional results of the winner-take-all part are dominant over the proportional component. Mixed member majoritarian systems are therefore categorized under semi-proportional representation, and are usually contrasted with mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) which aims to provide proportional representation compensation ("top-up") seats.

References

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  3. Lundberg, Thomas Carl (22 October 2010). "Post-communism and the abandonment of mixedmember electoral systems" (PDF). University of Glasgow. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 January 2021. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  4. "Elections - GRN Portal". www.ecn.na. Archived from the original on 21 July 2018. Retrieved 20 July 2018.
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