Update: See the details provided by Alan R. in a comment.
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Thanks to the “incoming links” feature of Word Press, I found Dr Sean Hanley’s Diary. There it was noted about a month ago that the Romanian proposal for a shift to (partial) single-seat districts (from purec losed-list proportional representation)–noted here as an objective of mass protestersaa some time ago–has been approved.
Evidently it is not a pure first-past-the-post systemaa; some list seats will remain. Details are sketchy (at least in English). As Hanley concludes, the system is
likely to be less a political ‘flat tax’ solution sweeping out party corruption, as many commentators and most of the Romanian public seem to believe, than a measure empowering local political bosses at the expense of higher level party and state structures.
The Romanian reform applies to both houses of parliament. Over at Dr Hanley’s blog, I added the following:
On bicameralism, if the cabinet must depend on the confidence of both chambers, it certainly makes sense that the chambers be elected by congruent electoral systems. Italy is the preeminent case. I do not recall whether either chamber can oust a cabinet in Romania. In the Czech Republic (as in Japan, Germany, and most other parliamentary or semi-presidential bicameral systems) the second chamber has no such powers. Then, I would argue, having incongruent electoral systems (and districting) is a coherent aspect of institutional design: introduce some degree of veto (depending on other powers of the second chamber), without adding an extra complication to cabinet formation/durability.
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- OK, so it was an ancillary objective of said protests; demonstrators’ signs carried references to the “uninominal” voting reform.aaa
- As Alan Renwick notes in the comment, it is a mix that remains mostly proportional.aaa
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More detailed information on the new law can be found in a later post, although much seems to be unclear, which is very much in keeping with the way Romanian parliamentarians operate, specialists on the country tell me. My comments, which you quote above about the empowerment of notables, are probably a little wide of the mark due to me not being able to work out the details from sketchy English language reports. Indeed, aspects of the law they have passed seem designed to block such candidatures or at least to coral ‘independent’ notables into parties.
According to my quick reading of the Romanian Constitution the cabinet depends only on the lower house, although the Senate can submit a motion of censure.
My sense is that electoral reform is a rather haphazard process with countries in SE Europe looking for magic bullet, which will clean up their politics at one stroke. The Bulgarians are now talking about electoral reform for similar reasons. I think some kind of presidential working group has been set up.
Seed planted by Sean Hanley — 11 April 2008 @ 16:13
The new Romanian electoral system really lives up to the old cliché, “a complex form of PRâ€. Here is an attempt to make sense of it, for which Marina Popescu takes primary credit.
In Fall 2007, following years of popular pressure fomented by an NGO and the press for improving accountability and strengthening the linkages between citizens and elected representatives via the shift to a ‘uninominal’ (i.e., single-member-district) electoral system, the Romanian government proposed a mixed-member system. This would have been similar to the one used for the Italian Senate from 1993 to 2005, but would have ensured proportionality by having a variable number of at least 50 per cent of seats reserved for compensation, rather than just 25% as in Italy.
This bill passed through parliament, but the President did not sign it. Instead, he called a consultative referendum, which unexpectedly proposed introducing a French-style two-round majoritarian system. Following a campaign appealing to concerns with improving accountability and aversion to party lists, 83.4 per cent of the voters supported the initiative but the turnout (at 26.5 per cent) fell short of the 50 per cent quorum required. The President then appealed to the Constitutional Court, which annulled the government’s electoral reform legislation arguing that the anticipated use of a national list amounted to an indirect election and was thus anti-constitutional.
The current electoral system was adopted in February-March 2008 by parliament and is based on SMDs only in the limited sense that the pre-1993 Italian Senate was. All 42 counties of Romania are divided into single-member districts and each citizen has a single vote to be cast for a candidate. Candidates win the seat automatically if they obtained over 50 per cent of the constituency vote. Nevertheless, the overall composition of parliament will be proportional: the two-tier seat allocation method used in the old closed-list system is retained, using the Hare quota at the county level, and then d’Hondt for nationally cumulated votes and seats remaining after the county-level allocation, with a five percent legal threshold applied throughout. Parliament can vary in size to guarantee each party the number of seats due to it proportionally. But parties may end up with more seats than that if they win enough seats with an absolute majority.
Now here’s the really complicated bit. Besides the SMD outright winners, a party’s seats are allocated to candidates in decreasing order of the ratio between the absolute number of votes they received and the quota in the county where they ran. However, the seat allocation mechanism assures that every SMD is assigned a representative who actually ran for election in that district, and this goal is consistently prioritized over rewarding the highest vote getters. How will all of that work in practice? We don’t have to wait too long to find out: elections are due by the end of November.
Seed planted by Alan Renwick — 16 April 2008 @ 01:16
Can the number of members really vary? If so, do you have any more details? My superficial understanding was that there would be no overhang seats, and that the number of seats for each county would continue to be predetermined strictly according to population (here I exclude the national minority deputies, who do vary).
As I see it, this is not such a radical reform, except that county-wide sweeps will now be able to skew the overall party distribution (although it is likely that most members will not be elected by 50% plus), and possibly more importantly, that candidates may achieve a stronger local connection (although the last of the proportional seats in each county may be distributed to candidates with very few votes - this will be necessary in order to make up the numbers).
I would personally prefer fewer districts than seats (perhaps in about a two-thirds ratio), so that virtually all districts would be represented by someone with considerable support there, and so that the smaller parties would be represented less randomly (than simply, as often will be the case, by candidates in the leftover districts). This would also mean that within each county, some districts would have more than one member, which I do not see as a big problem.
Seed planted by Espen Bjerke — 16 April 2008 @ 17:11
> ‘This bill passed through parliament, but the President did not sign it. Instead, he called a consultative referendum, which unexpectedly proposed introducing a French-style two-round majoritarian system.’
How did that come about? Does Romania have some sort of petititon initiative? Or did the cabinet/ parliament add extra “sweeteners” to the referendum menu, to make the choice look more democratic, but then got blind-sided when the voters gave Option B or C a plurality instead of Option A? (much as if NZ voters in 1993 had favoured AV over MMP or STV, which the Royal Commission had shortlisted the highest).
> ‘… the Constitutional Court… annulled the government’s electoral reform legislation arguing that the anticipated use of a national list amounted to an indirect election and was thus [un]constitutional.’
Good to see at least some European judges agreeing with the Australian High Court on this.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 16 April 2008 @ 18:37
Romania: Electoral Reform
Scion grafted by Global Voices Online — 22 April 2008 @ 17:10
Romania election
This election is noteworthy not simply because it is the first since Romania joined the EU, but because it is the first nonconcurrent legislative election in Romania as well as the first under a reformed electoral system.
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 30 November 2008 @ 20:21