Parliamentary election reform working group proposes nationwide and local vote hurdle

Aim of changes to make representation more proportional

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A working group examining electoral reform in Finnish Parliamentary elections is proposing a two-hurdle system for entry into Parliament. The aim is to ensure that the actual distribution of the nationwide vote would be reflected in the allocation of Parliamentary seats more accurately than it is in the variation of the d'Hondt method of proportional representation that is now in use in Finland.
     Under the proposal by the task force headed by Lauri Tarasti, a party would have to get a 3.5 per cent share of the nationwide vote to get seats in Parliament. A party that does not reach that hurdle on the national level could still get in if it wins 12 per cent of the vote in one electoral district.
     "Each party would get the right number of representatives", said Lauri Tarasti.
     
Sharply criticising the model was political scientist, Professor Sami Borg of the University of Tampere. "It is nothing but raw political power games", Borg said.
     Professor Borg warns that the threshold could rise higher than what the hidden vote threshold has been so far.
     "Vote hurdles of this size do not suit the Finnish system. This is a lamentable outcome", Borg says. In his view, a two per cent hurdle would be "closer to moderation".
     Two small parties, the Swedish People's Party and the True Finns, presented a dissenting opinion on the matter.
     Green League party secretary Panu Laturi notes that the party's chairwoman Tarja Cronberg would have won a seat in Parliament if the proposed system had been in force in the last Parliamentary elections. Cronberg failed to get elected in spite of getting the second-highest personal vote count in the North Karelia electoral district where she was running. However, as the district sends only six representatives to Parliament, the total number of votes won by the Greens was not enough for a single seat in that district. Cronberg's predicament was one of the reasons why the electoral reform initiative was put forward.
     Swedish People's Party secretary Ulla Achrén says that a better model for the party would be one in which a party that exceeds the vote hurdle in one electoral district would be taken into the nationwide vote count. In last year's elections the Swedish People's Party got 20 per cent of the vote in Vaasa.
     The Social Democratic Party would prefer a change in which large electoral districts would be divided, and small ones merged.
     "The system based on electoral districts has worked well for 100 years. Now there is an attempt to fix the system by creating new problems", Party Secretary Maarit Feldt-Ranta said.
     She notes that under the proposed system, a vote cast in Oulu might affect whether or not a candidate in Kymi gets elected.
     True Finns chairman Timo Soini proposes a national vote threshold of two per cent.
     "With a hurdle of 3.5 percent, more than 100,000 votes could be wasted."
     In other respects, Soini is pleased with the proposed reform. In last year's Parliamentary election, the True got 4.1 per cent of the vote nationwide, and would have won eight seats instead of the five that they got.
     
Professor Borg warns that the possibilities of new political groups to make it into Parliament would be eliminated by the proposes new system. He notes that the Greens would not be in Parliament if the kind of system that is now being proposed had been in use in the 1980s.
     The Uusimaa electoral district, which sends 34 MPs to Parliament, has been a relatively easy place for new groups to get a foothold in Parliament, with less than three per cent of the vote in the district.
     "Large parties should have the nerve to examine the matter from the point of view of the Finnish party system in the long perspective."
     Borg welcomes the idea of making all of Finland a single electoral region.
     
"Large parties would lose in the proposal. The National Coalition Party would have lost four seats in the previous elections, and the Centre Party would also have lost four. The SDP's losses would have been a couple of seats", calculated National Coalition Party secretary Taru Tujunen on the basis of the previous elections.
      "But electoral alliances would be banned in the future, and it is not known how the new system would affect voting behaviour."


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Task force examines election reform (7.2.2008)
  President Halonen calls for debate on reform of electoral system (29.3.2007)
  Pressure grows for reform of Parliamentary electoral system (22.3.2007)

Links:
  Wikipedia - The D´Hondt method

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