I came across super-clear description of an election Elections and Referendums / The Danish Parliament I don't how it works in the original Danish but it is clear to me in English. even votes left blank are explained! (It looks like each voter marks just one X for party or candidate, and election officials do all the rest. so that is interesting.)
Danish elections are MMP where the district seats are fairly elected using party-list PR at the district level.
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A friend wrote this:
Danish people also have it easy when getting ready to vote. All people in Denmark are on a centralized registry of people with enough information to know whether they are eligible. Citizens are eligible to vote for all elections, residents can vote in local elections and European citizens can vote for European Parliamentary elections. Everyone who is eligible will be sent a card a couple of weeks in advance which is sufficient identification to vote. Also, they give very strong autonomy to both the Faroe and Greenlandic islands, to the point that calling them different countries is not a bad way to describe them. Denmark internally isn´t really divided enough to be worth doing the same more than autonomy you associate with municipal devolution, but they do know how to go further if they needed to as might be appropriate in Canada. Denmark even held a genuinely free (as free as anyone can get) election while under the occupation of the literal Nazis with 90 percent turnout. Interestingly, they actually only got a tiny fraction of the vote, 2.15 percent of the vote, which was less than 0.2 percent of the vote more than they got before the war in the first place. They saved nearly all of the Jews in Denmark by transporting them across the harbour to Sweden. The British were occupying the Faroe islands at the time but they also held their election for their delegation to the Folketing, which is a really weird kind of way to hold an election. The Germans officially had to claim that they were a garrison protecting Denmark from Allied invasion and that domestic affairs were 100-percent Denmark´s prerogative, even though of course that wasn't fully true, so I guess this explains how that happened. Perhaps they can get a referendum in England on whether or not to rejoin the North Sea Empire and to get seats in their own proportional parliament. The Danes seem to be good at governing. =====================
Denmark:
has 10 constituencies which are said to largely correspond to the Provinces of Denmark (which themselves are statistical divisions of the regions of the country, each having between 2 and 20 members.)
But we see that Denmark has five regions, and it has ten districts plus Faroe Isl. and Greenland
None of the constituencies use the same name as the regions, so that avoids some confusion but also makes it unclear what is happening.
it seems two regions are used as MMDs.
One region is divided into four constituencies.
Two regions are divided into two constituencies.
Region districts
Syddenmark includes both South Jutland and Funen
Midtjylland is divided into East Jutland and West Jutland
Nordylland is North Jutland
Sjaelland is Zealand
Hovedstaten is divided into Copenhagen, Greater Copenhagen, North Zealand, and Bornholm.
So two constituencies are identical in boundary to regions.
and for others no constituency takes in parts of more than one region.
no municipality is divided into different constituencies.
so at least in part, regions are used to set boundaries of constituencies
Hovedstaten has 40 members and could be two constituencies
but Bornholm, an island offshore, is an entity unto itself.
North Zealand is separate from Copenhagen and Greater Copenhagen, the difference beeen rural and suburban voters apparently.
Copenhagen is separate from Greater Copenhagen, the difference beeen urban and suburban voters apparently.
Midtjylland has 31 members so is divided into East Jutland (18 members) and West Jutland (13 members).
Syddenmark has 29 members.
Funen is a separate island from South Jutland, so they are each given their own constituency.
It all seems to make sense.
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For instance, in the 2022 Danish general election, the main electoral threshold of
2 percent in use meant 71,000 of the 3.534M votes cast overall were required for a party to be eligible for levelling seats,
while in the 10-seat North Zealand Folketing constituency, Droop quota (set at 9 percent) would have been 26,500 (1/11th of 292,000 valid votes).
In the North Zealand constituency in the 2022 election, held using list PR (where theoretical threshold is ten percent of district votes) the Conservative People's party with just 22,000 votes filled a seat, ten percent of the seats in the district.
(75 percent of votes cast in district were used to fill seats,
the other 25 percent of votes had been placed on parties that did not have more than 7 percent of votes cast.
1/10th was not solid threshold, due to the wasted votes problem.)
Meanwhile when levelling seats were allocated, the Independent Greens with almost 32,000 votes overall were not allocated any seats, not even as top-up.
Thus a party with 22,000 votes took a seat under list PR, and would have also under STV, while a party with 32,000 votes did not take a seat under list PR, neither at the district level nor overall level (top-up).
Independent Greens took less than the threshold but would have had enough votes to take a seat if they had had just two-thirds of their support in North Zealand (or another district).
see:
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a similar system to Denmark's could be used in Canada:
perhaps in Canada, Vancouver Island would be its own MMD,
and mainland BC divided into Vancouver, separate from its suburbs, separate from non-urban areas, each with its own MMD.
the same for cities in the other provinces.
- no district would take in parts of more than one province.
- each major city would be in one district or in districts that cover the city and do not extend past the city.
- each county would be in one district or in districts that cover the county and do not extend past the city. that is, no county would be divided into different constituencies.
(see separate blog on use of Danish MMP in future Canada)
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in Canada, no overall threshold is possible as votes do not cross provincial borders.
But as seats are (mostly) allocated in fair proportion to provincial populations, with the use of fair voting, the effective electoral threshold in each district would be same or less than total votes/total seats.
Also, fair voting would mean that in each district, the effective electoral threshold would be no greater than provincial votes/provincial seats, unless some arbitrary electoral threshold is put into effect at the provincial level or some other lower level.
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As well, Denmark's list PR is open-list.
"Proportional: Proportional representation system according to a modified version of the St. Laguë method and Hare quota and using the method of greatest remainders. Each elector can cast either a "personal vote" for one of the candidates or a vote for one of the party lists. They can vote for any of the candidates or parties of their constituency, not being limited to those of their nomination district."
From:
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