Pressure grows for reform of Parliamentary electoral system
Shortcomings seen in proportionality in small electoral districts
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Pressure for including reform of Finland’s Parliamentary electoral system in the next government programme is growing.
The question of fine-tuning Finland’s system of proportional representation in Parliamentary elections will be brought up by the Green League in the upcoming talks.
The issue arose after Greens chairwoman Tarja Cronberg was not elected to Parliament, even though she got nearly 8,000 personal votes in the North Karelia electoral district, and even though the Greens got 11.7 per cent of the ballots cast in the district.
Many of those who made it into Parliament did so with far fewer personal votes than Cronberg got.
Social Democratic Party Parliamentary Group chairman Jouni Backman has also called for changes. The SDP got 27.6 per cent of the votes in the South Savo district, but only one seat. Backman, who got over 5,000 personal votes, also failed to win re-election.
"We understand the pain of the Greens, and we have suffered from it ourselves to some degree", said National Coalition Party Secretary Taru Tujunen. "The vote thresholds in eastern electoral districts, for instance, have become so high that it really is unfair."
Tujunen adds that the government programme can include a commitment to examine the issue. "It would suit us very well."
Centre Party Secretary Jarmo Korhonen is less enthusiastic about changing the present system, which he says guarantees each area representation corresponding to size of the population.
"The present division into electoral districts is the least bad of the models available. I believe that the next elections will be held under an electoral district system like the present one.
The number of Members of Parliament elected from each electoral district is determined by the size of the population in the area. The Uusimaa district in the south of Finland has 34 MPs, while the districts of North Karelia and South Savo have six each.
The differences in the size of the districts creates so-called hidden vote thresholds which vary considerably. In Uusimaa, a party only needs about three per cent of the vote in the district to get an MP elected. In South Savo, 14 per cent of the total is needed for one MP, which means that generally only large parties are able to win any seats in small districts.
The system particularly favours the Centre Party, which is strongest in rural areas.
The Ministry of Justice has examined various options for boosting the proportionality of representation in small electoral districts. Last autumn, ministry official Lauri Tarasti suggested that the electoral districts of South Savo, North Savo, and North Karelia should be merged to form a single electoral region, which would bring the threshold required for a party to get one MP elected to 4.3 per cent.
Another possibility would be to allocate a certain number of Parliamentary seats to parties whose share of the national vote exceeds a certain threshold. In one possible application of this model, 189 seats would be allocated according to electoral districts as is the case now, and ten extra seats would be distributed among parties proportionally on the basis of the national result. One seat would be for the autonomous Åland Islands, as is the case now.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 22.3.2007 - TODAY |
 Pressure grows for reform of Parliamentary electoral system
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