Open list
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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 as opposed to closed list, which allows the usually much fewer, active, voting party members to determine the order of its candidates and gives the voter no influence at all on the position of the candidates placed on the party list. Additionally, an open list system can also allow a voter to vote for the party as a whole without expressing a preference between individuals.
There are still differences possible between open list systems, each giving the voter varying amounts of influence.
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[edit] List Systems
[edit] Relatively Closed List
A 'relatively closed' open list system would be one where a candidate has to get a full quota (usually Hare quota, but Droop quota is also possible) on his or her own in order to be elected. The total number of seats won by the party minus the number of its candidates that succeeded in getting this quota would then successively be given to those unelected candidates from that party who had been ranked highest on the original list.
[edit] More Open List
For a 'more open' list system, the quota could be lowered to less than a full one instead (the Netherlands for example uses 25% for its Lower House elections). It is then (theoretically) possible that more candidates are eligible for a seat than the party deserves as a whole. It should therefore be clear in advance whether list ranking or absolute votes takes precedence in that case.
In Swedish elections, the 'most open' list is used, but a person needs to receive 5 percent of the party's votes (in elections to the European Parliament, municipal assemblies or county councils) or 8 percent of the party's votes (in elections to the Riksdag) for the personal vote to overrule the ordering on the party list.[1] Voting without expressing a preference between individuals is possible, although the parties urge their voters to support the party's prime candidate, to protect them from being overrun by a person ranked lower by the party.
In Slovakia each voter may, in addition to the party, select one to four candidates from the ordered party list. Candidates who are selected by more than three percent of all of a party's voters are elected (in order of total number of votes) first and only then is the party ordering used. For European elections, voters select two candidates and the candidates must have more than 10 percent of the total votes to override the party list. In practice however, the most well-known candidates tend to be at the top of the party lists, and there are often 15-20 parties in elections so the effect of voters either not giving preference votes at all after selecting a specific party, or giving them to candidates who would be elected anyway is that there are very few candidates elected who would not be elected anyway by virtue of their position on the party lists. However, in the European election in 2009 (the most recent election run under this system) three of Slovakia's thirteen MEPs were elected by solely by virtue of preference votes (having positions too low to otherwise win) and only one (Katarína Neveďalová of SMER) was elected solely by virtue of her position on the party list (having fewer preference votes than a number of other candidates who themselves, nevertheless had preferences from fewer than 10 percent of their party's voters).
A country could introduce a version of a more open list voting system allowing parties to choose a small number (say, 5 or 10) of candidates to be guaranteed to be selected first (perhaps to form a small 'core' of government, such as head of state, cabinet, etc.) This solves the problem of major party figures being prevented from taking office, yet still allows the vast majority of party candidates' order on the party list to be decided by the voters.
[edit] Most Open List
The 'most open' list system is the one where the absolute amount of votes every candidate got fully determines the "order of election" (the list ranking only possibly serving as a 'tiebreaker'). When such a system is used, one could make the case that 'within' every party an additional virtual single non-transferable vote election is taking place. This system is used in all Finnish and Brazilian multiple-seat elections. While ties may be resolved by a toss in Finland, the oldest candidate wins the tie in Brazil.
[edit] Free List
A 'free list' is similar in principle to the most open list, but instead of having just one vote for one candidate in one list, an elector has (usually) as many votes as there are seats to be filled, and may distribute these among different candidates in different lists. Electors may also give more votes to one candidate, in a manner similar to cumulative voting. This gives the elector more control over which candidates are elected. [1]
[edit] Practical operation
Two ways to operate an open list system when using traditional paper-based voting are as follows. One, to have a large ballot paper with a box for each party and sub-boxes for the various candidates. The second method (as used in Slovakia) is to have a separate ballot paper for each party. To maintain voter secrecy, the voter is handed a ballot paper for each party. He chooses his candidates (or not if he only wants to vote for the party) on one of the papers and puts that paper into an envelope, putting the envelope into the ballot box throwing the rest into a huge bin set up for the purpose.
[edit] References
- ^ Swedish Election Authority: Elections in Sweden: The way its done (page 16)
The difference between "Open" and "Closed" lists was debated in 2004 by the Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform in British Columbia, Canada during the Learning Phase of Week 5. http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public/learning_resources/learning_materials/week5
[edit] Further reading
- Toplak, Jurij. "Preferential Voting: Definition and Classification" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association 67th Annual National Conference, Chicago, IL, April 2009.
