[EM] Changing the Norwegian election system

[Vidar Wahlberg]

I've taken on an ambitious endeavour; Attempting to initiate a change of
the Norwegian parliament election system.
The chance of achieving anything probably isn't that great, but I do
have some political connections that have shown interest and wish to
meet me in order to discuss it further.

This is where you come in. I'd like you to point out any flaws and
weaknesses in the modifications I suggest.
Suggestions are welcome, but do note that radical changes, such as
changing the way we vote and count votes likely won't be well received
(unfortunately). The idea is to improve the voting system as much as
possible, while keeping the changes as transparent as possible to the
voter.


== Our current election briefly explained ==

= Representatives per district =
In total there are 169 parliament representatives. These are allocated
to 19 districts using Sainte-Laguë based on "population +
area(km²)*1.8". Currently the amount of representatives per district
ranges from 4 to 19.
The amount of representatives per district are recalculated every second
election (every 8th year), based on the population at the start of the
previous year (district representatives for the 2013 election was based
on population 1st january 2012).
For more details I created a simple spreadsheet, it's written in
Norwegian, but it's probably understandable for non-Norwegians. It's the
first table, the second table I'll address later:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsOt7wZ7dVTzdFFZLUpRbkp1eHhxand3aWlTT0xqU1E

= Casting votes =
We're using a party-list system, each voter have one vote to be cast on
one party. Each district have their own set of party lists, the voters
choose their preferred party and may exclude candidates from the ballot.
To my knowledge no candidates have ever been excluded as 50% of the
voters needs to exclude the person from the ballot for hir to be
unelectable. It is already decided that this is to be changed so the
voters can influence the candidate order in a greater degree, but the
order of the candidates is a fairly isolated system that I don't intend
to suggest modifications for this time.
In each district there usually are between 10 and 20 parties to choose
from, which in this year's election resulted in 8 different parties
winning parliament representation.

= Electing the representatives =
Of the district's representatives, all but one are elected directly by
the votes in the district using modified Sainte-Laguë (first divisor is
1.4, then normal S-L follows). These representatives are called
"distriktsmandat" in Norwegian.
The last representative in each district (making 19 in total) is
reserved for the parties that reached the election threshold (4%), but
so far have received less seats than they would if all the 169 seats
were distributed in one district based on the national vote result.
These 19 representatives are called "utjevningsmandat" in Norwegian.
A rough explanation on how the last 19 seats are distributed is that the
first seat goes to the party in the district that was nearest to winning
a seat. District now got all its representatives and is excluded from
further seat allocations. If the party reach the amount of seats they
would've won in a one-district election it too is excluded from further
seat allocations. This is repeated until all the 19 seats are allocated.
Once elected, there's no difference between "distriktsmandat" and
"utjevningsmandat", they are equal in power and influence.
This page explains very well how leveling seats are distributed, but
unfortunately it's only available in Norwegian:
http://www.valginfo.net/index#/utjevningsmandater


== Some notable problems with the current system ==

= Election threshold =
This makes it difficult for new parties to challenge the established
parties. Arguably worse is that even though we have 7-8 significant
parties, they tend to form "blocks", and these "blocks" are given a
great incentive to attack parties near the election threshold in another
"block" as that will result in several seats being distributed to the
other parties. In 2009 a party fell just below the election threshold,
with no election threshold the party would receive 7 seats, but instead
they only received 2 seats (the election threshold is not absolute, a
party can still win seats directly, but is excluded from competing for
leveling seats).

= Different vote weight and overhang seats =
Votes weight differently across districts, a vote in Finnmark weighs
significantly more than a vote in Oslo as Finnmark gets more
representatives than Oslo relative to the population. As there also are
a limited amount of leveling seats it's not unusual for the larger
parties to receive overhang seats. In the 3 elections we've had with the
current system this happened twice, in 2005 and 2009.

= Arbitrary allocation of leveling seats =
The way the leveling seats are allocated means that the final seat must
be given to the district that haven't yet received it's leveling seat.
In 2005 this resulted in a party winning 1 of 5 seats in a district
where they had nearly no support (2.2% of the votes). At the same time
that party had very good support in several other districts, but
slightly worse than other parties, which happened to have notably
greater support in the district where the party with 2.2% of the votes
won a seat.

= Few representatives in certain districts =
Some districts have as few as 4 representatives, yet there still are 5-6
significant parties in the district. A party needs a significant larger
portion of the votes to win a seat than in districts with more seats.
This gives the voters an incentive to vote for a party more likely to
win a seat, so the seat won't go to a third party instead. In addition,
since area is included in the calculation, a large district receives
more representatives than a small district even though the population is
identical.
In the parliament election people tend to be more loyal to the party
than the candidates, so this is may not be a very significant issue.

= Wasted votes =
A vote to a party that didn't win a seat is a wasted vote. With no or a
very low election threshold, this problem is reduced.


== Suggestions I believe may be achievable ==

= Remove or greatly reduce election threshold =
Norway is a stable democracy, capable of forming a government to both
sides of the economical axis. With no election threshold we would see
2-3 additional parties in the parliament for the last 3 elections making
up 3-4 seats. With a 1% election threshold only one additional party
would be represented with 2 seats.
Such a change would make it more possible for new parties to challenge
the established parties, there would not be an artifical border that
gives blocks a strong incentive to attack parties near this border in
order to "free" multiple seats, and the chance of wasting one's vote by
voting on smaller parties is reduced.
This change alone will likely cause more overhang seats.

= Replace current apportionment with biproportional apportionment =
This would make all votes weight equally, remove overhang seats and
distribute seats optimally to where the parties got the most support.
This system also cause the election threshold to be absolute, which
makes it even more important that the election threshold is reduced.

= Amount of district seats based on degressive proportionality =
Instead of using Sainte-Laguë based on population and area to calculate
amount of district seats, a degressive proportionality based purely on
population may help prevent certain districts from receiving too few
representatives and ensure that two district with approximately the same
amount of inhabitants receive the same amount of representatives.
The second table in the spreadsheet I referenced earlier shows a
district seat allocation using a degressive proportionality, where
Sainte-Laguë (divisor = 2s+1) is replaced by a parabolic function, such
as: divisor = s²+1. The parabolic function likely has to be tuned, this
only serves as an example on how the increase in population also
increase the amount of inhabitants per representative. The European
Union use a degressive proportionality system for their parliament
members, although they are not using a mathematical function.
I'm not entirely sure about this modification yet. Without
biproportional apportionment (or more leveling seats) it will increase
the differences in vote weight, even with biproportional apportionment
you'll get more cases of a party winning more seats than a party with
more votes, and the problem this modification is designed to solve may
not be a significant problem.


== Some other suggestions, likely too radical ==

= Two votes per voter =
Doubles the effort of voting and counting votes, but serves as a crude
cumulative voting system which arguably is more expressive than a
non-preferential single vote systems. No changes to the ballot
necessary, each voter just cast two ballots. Useful for those who are
split between two parties, but most people will likely just give two
votes to the same party.

= Specify 2nd preference on ballot =
Only useful for voters of party that likely won't win a seat. If the
party doesn't win any seats, the party is excluded from the election,
votes are transfered to the 2nd preference and a new round is
calculated.
Requires modifying the ballot and makes it more difficult both to vote
and count votes. If election threshold isn't removed or reduced, a
change like this becomes more important with biproportional
apportionment (because of the absolute election threshold, which will
make it even more difficult to challenge established parties).


-- 
Regards,
Vidar Wahlberg