[EM] Changing the Norwegian election system

[Juho Laatu]

On 4.11.2013, at 12.40, Vidar Wahlberg <canidae at exent.net> wrote:

> As noted this is a fairly isolated system and the current system is
> scheduled to be changed, likely to a similar system we use for municipal
> elections.

That’s interesting. Better make best use of this already existing interest to make changes, and the already existing pattern of change.

> In the municipal election each party can mark some candidates to
> be prioritized and thus more likely to win even though subsequent
> candidates have received more "personal votes", and the voters are able
> to influence the order by giving these "personal votes" to candidates.

That means approval style party preferences + open list style personal votes, right?

> Sort of a semi-open list, I think this is a fair intermediate, assuming
> that the party is better at choosing skilled politicians, while making
> sure that it's not impossible for the voters to change the order.

I note that also voters tend to vote for skilled politicians. I hope the interest to keep closed lists has not too much to do with allowing key figures within the party to get their safe seats. There can be arguments in both drections, I just hope the targets and final compromise will be based on what people in general consider best, not on what the incumbent politicians consider best for themselves.

> I don't know exactly how many "personal votes" a non-prioritized
> candidate needs to be elected in front of a prioritized candidate, but
> it's more possible than the current system where a candidate must be
> excluded by the majority.

I guess there can be many kind of mixes and balances based on information from the party (candidate prioritization, candidate preference order, party preference) and voters (party, candidate, party ranking/approval, candidate ranking/approval). I think t would be good to find example scenarios where one or the other opinion should override the other. This way the algorithm will be there for real, not just as a non-working place holder.

- - -

> The smaller parties usually do this, if a district didn't win a seat
> then the elected parliament member of a neighbouring district becomes
> their connection to Stortinget.
> There are still some issues, for example the northernmost district don't
> have that many representatives so it's not unusual that some parties
> don't win any seats in the northern half of the country. There are some
> different values between the districts, it may not be very well received
> that a representative from the southern parts of the country is to
> represent the northernmost districts.

I mentioned already the possibility of grouping the parties. One can do the same with districts, and actually this also works better. It is for example possible to allocate the seats (biproportionally) so that the nothern half will get exactly as many seats as it had votes for some party. It would not be possible that all seats of a party will go to the southern half, if also the northern voters gave many enough votes to guarantee one seat. Also subdivisions can be used so that there will be a tree of districts. This kind of tree based approach also helps to identify who the intended representative(s) of each voter are.

- - -

> County elections may disappear in the future, though. There are plans to
> reduce our 428 municipals to somewhere around 125, which may make the
> county elections less necessary.

Same plans here in Finland too. The govenment wants to combine the traditional municipalities into some bigger units. I don’t like the idea of reducing the number of municipalities and getting rid of the traditional communities. That is because already the constitution talks about local democracy where people are guaranteed right to decide about their local matters locally. In that sense I see the political system to consist of two approaches to democracy, one top down governing system at country level, and one bottom up system that is as close to the voters as possible. The traditional municipalities also have their own historical nature, and people associate themselves mentally with their own municipality. That is a good basis for democracy (= areas that people find natural and where they have reasonably similar interests, and where they know each others and the whole area). But in Norway you do it the Norwegian way, whatever people consider to be the best approach to arranging country wide, county level and municipal/local democracy..

Juho