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MMP The Bavarian model - open-list MMP
It’s interesting to look at, since it is the only living open-regional-list model.
Yes, their counting method reduces the scope for the “Berlusconi trick.” But you will see it still works to let voters move candidates up or down the list nicely.
(However, it has several tweaks that we likely would not want in Canada.)
[I don't know quite what he means here - haven't yet gone to Wilf's blog]
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[91 elected in wards by FPTP, it seems]
For the election to the Bavarian State Parliament, the Free State of Bavaria is divided into 91 wards.
The parties and organised groups of voters put forward one candidate for every ward. Then the voters in this ward can elect one of these candidates with their first vote.
Whoever receives the majority [plurality actually] of the first votes in a ward enters the Bavarian State Parliament
(prerequisite: the ward winner’s party has to have received a total of at least five percent of all valid votes cast Bavaria-wide).
[so that is unusual - the candidate with the plurality in the district in some cases is not elected to the district seat.
I dont know how often that happens...]
Second vote (seat obtained via a party list)
[Seven constituencies (regions)]
The constituencies in a state election are identical with the seven administrative regions in Bavaria.
Parties and organised groups of voters form lists with their candidates for each of the seven constituencies.
The voters of a constituency give their second vote to one candidate from these lists. [not necessarily from the voter's own ward]
the party label of the candidate is used to calculate party vote tallies.
seat tallies are allocated to parties based on party vote tallies.
top-up seats are allocated in compensatory fashion to parties.
Anyone who has achieved popularity sufficient to have a place within the number of seats to be allocated can enter Parliament.
A total of 89 representatives can be designated via the constituencies.
For reasons of electoral fairness, the number of total seats to be allocated in a constituency depends on the number of inhabitants.
plus 23 seats may be allocated as levelling seats and to compensate for overhang.
I don't know the rules for that.
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2023 German reforms to avoid overhangs
(info below is from
The German Electoral Law as of Summer 2024
The electoral law is fairly straightforward now: each ballot has two votes, one for a district candidate, the second for a state party list. The future Bundestag has a fixed size of 630 members, and mandates are allotted strictly in proportion to the vote share of all parties that reach at least 5 percent of the votes nationally or win three electoral districts. Candidates who gain the (relative) majority in one of the 299 districts receive the first mandates, the remaining seats for each party are filled according to the order of the party list.
[after reunification, overhangs became more common]
the so-called surplus or overhanging mandates (Überhangmandate) occurred in larger numbers than before; but other reasons in electoral math and organization contributed to this, as well: variations in district size and the intermediate calculations based on the vote shares in the federal states. Surplus mandates come about as follows: any MP who received a relative majority in a district had their seat in Parliament secured; nobody could take it away. This could lead to the situation that a party already received more seats in one state according to the first votes than its correct proportional share according to the second vote.
The mathematical operations behind these calculations were complex and could even lead to paradoxical effects. This received broad attention when an MP of the National Democratic Party (NPD) died in 2005. Elections in the district in Dresden were rerun, and it became apparent that the CDU could actually lose one seat in Parliament if it won a certain number of second votes (specifically: between 42,000 and 60,000). In this way, voters casting their ballot for the CDU could cause a mandate loss. Hence, the effect is called negatives Stimmgewicht (negative vote weight).
This effect had occurred before in a few cases, but because of this isolated election in one district only, it was all of a sudden visible and even discussed in campaign strategy. This paradox led to a contestation of the electoral law in the Constitutional Court, and the judges deemed the law unconstitutional in 2008, asking for further reform.
... The governing coalition of CDU, CSU, and FDP made some adjustments to reduce the chances for overhanging mandates and—under certain conditions—included additional mandates created by remaining votes (Reststimmenmandate).
[challenged and opposed by other parties]
... The opposition challenged it again in the Constitutional Court. In 2012, the Court decided that surplus mandates may not exceed a certain total number (roughly fifteen), otherwise they had to be compensated or erased.
The Bundestag thus changed the electoral law by introducing compensatory mandates that were always added for the other parties if surplus mandates occurred. In this way, proportionality would be secured and the principle of equal vote guaranteed.
But these compensatory mandates came at a price: they led to [ increase in size of the Bundestag].
In 2013, there were only four surplus mandates that led to twenty-nine compensatory mandates,
four years later, forty-six surplus mandates produced sixty-five compensatory mandates, and,
in 2021, thirty-four surplus mandates brought about 104 compensatory mandates.
The Bundestag of 2021 therefore had 736 members, making it the biggest national parliamentary chamber in the world....
[2023 government moved to reform
held expert hearings]
Some of the invited experts—ironically those that had been nominated by the CDU—argued that the included base mandate clause (Grundmandatsklausel) was an inconsistency in the law. According to this clause that had existed in the old electoral law, those parties that win at least three districts with the first vote do still participate in the proportional allocation of seats according to the second vote, even if they do not pass the 5 percent threshold. In the 2021 election.
Die Linke had only gained proportional representation according to its 4.9 percent vote share because of this clause.
Moreover, because the CSU is a separate party from the CDU, it, too, must pass the national threshold, even though it only runs in Bavaria. In the past, the CSU had always been above five percent nationally, but the 5.2 percent in 2021 were its worst-ever results, so there was some danger looming for it, too.
... the base mandate clause [was] eliminated.
... the legal size of the Bundestag was set at 630 mandates, while the number of districts stayed at 299. The final readings in the Bundestag and the votes were taken on March 17, 2023. After the bill passed the Bundesrat in mid-May, it was promulgated by the Federal President and published on June 13, 2023.
On July 30, 2024, the Court presented its ruling (after it had inadvertently leaked the night before through a hidden link on the Court’s website). The decision was that the major change of the new electoral law was indeed not in conflict with the constitution: MPs only receive seats in a state if there are enough mandates according to the share of second votes (Zweistimmendeckung).
However, the exclusion of small parties was deemed too strict,
and the Court laid out various ways to secure their representation in a revised version of the law,
for example,
-by lowering the 5 percent threshold or
-connecting various parties who do not compete (as CDU and CSU) for the vote share calculation.
Questions about the likely effects of the new electoral law have been asked by its critics. for example:
Will deserted districts exist without representation in the Bundestag?
Simulations show that the number of MPs with a missing Zweitstimmendeckung is going to be very small. An analysis applying the new electoral law to voting behavior in 2021 came out at three cases.[15] The last-minute adjustment of the legal size of Parliament to 630 has further decreased this danger.
Empirical research has shown that the representative behavior of MPs is not only driven by electoral rules but also by the candidate nomination process and incentives resulting from it.[16]
Nomination in Germany—according to the electoral law—takes place by the respective party organizations in the district.[17] For MPs who compete for a place on the party list, it has become a de-facto prerequisite to get a district nomination first. Of the 736 MPs in the 20th Bundestag, 651 had been candidates in a district[18]—a share of 88.5 percent. Even if they were not technically elected there, they do uphold close ties there, conduct district work, and keep staff in district offices.
Therefore, most districts actually have multiple MPs from different parties that claim to represent them even if they were not directly elected there. The danger of deserted districts is therefore overblown.
Another criticism refers to the balance between mandates filled by first and second vote.
In the past, the legal size was 299 by district vote and another 299 by list vote.
The new system has 299 by district vote and 331 by list vote.
Yet if the surplus and compensation mandates are factored in, the current Bundestag has a share of 40.6 percent elected through first vote while according to the new law, the share will be 47.5 percent. Therefore, the importance of mandates earned by district vote is actually empirically strengthened.
Nonetheless, empirical research shows that in real representative behavior, there are no two types of MPs — those who are elected through the lists and those who won a direct mandate do not behave differently in a systematic fashion.[19]
...
for the moment, the new rules have found a balance between different conflicting goals:
proportionality,
direct MP connection through electoral districts,
the role of the state level, and
protection of minorities.
In its current form, the electoral law continues to combine the best of the worlds of proportional representation and majority vote [FPTP] in single-member districts.
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