Mongolia held its legislative assembly elections this past weekend. The Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party–the former Communist party–was reelected, evidently with 41 of the 76 seats. While Mongolia also has an elected presidency with some significant powers, the composition of the cabinet is determined entirely by the parliamentary majority (at least by my reading of the constitution).1 In any event, the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party also holds the presidency currently.2
It is not clear what the electoral system was for this election. Here I shall quote from a useful “seed” sent this orchard’s way by Wilf Day:
The Mongolian ballot looks interesting. They have changed back to a multi-member district system, but which one?
The new 1992 constitution provided for 76 members of parliament to be elected by block vote (plurality vote) in 26 electoral districts. The ruling ex-communist Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) party won a 70-member landslide in 1992. In January 1996, parliament amended the election law, such that all the 76 members of parliament were elected by plurality vote in single seat constituencies. The opposition alliance took power in the 1996 election with 50 seats. However, in 1997 the MPRP transformed itself into a social democratic party, and in 2000 the MPRP won a landslide victory: 72 of the 76 seats. In 2004 the close outcome — no party had a majority of the vote nor of the seats –resulted in a grand coalition which lasted less than two years, replaced in mid-term by an MPRP government with a very narrow majority. With this history, a new electoral system was overdue. A total of 76 new parliament members are being elected from 26 electoral districts throughout the country. The draft law provided for closed party lists on a proportional representation basis with a 5 percent threshold. But is that what they did?
It is indeed unclear. The ballot image at the first link Wilf provides is well worth a look, but I certainly can’t infer the electoral system from it. Nor is the accompanying text particularly illuminating:
This election is the first time a new voting system has been implemented. The new system is a rather complicated districtional system. In elections until now every constituency elected one member of parliament. The new system consists of considerably less constituencies but adds the novelty of several seats available in every one of them. The new ballots thus require voters to circle 3 or 4 candidates depending on the seats available.
As Wilf correctly noted above, multi-seat districts are not a novelty in Mongolia, though the news item is correct that recent elections have been held under single-seat districts.
The news item continues:
The new system poses challenges on every level. First voters are not yet used to circling multiple candidates and especially the number of candidates can cause some confusion. Reports have come in of people circling either too little or too many candidates. In the latter case the vote becomes invalid. The second challenge comes from the counting of the votes. The old fashioned method of piling up votes for the different candidates doesn’t work anymore since one ballot is casting votes for several candidates.
Here I am assuming that the “old fashioned method of piling up votes” actually refers to that prior system of multi-seat plurality (MNTV, or what others call “block vote”). The indicated contrast of this system to that one does imply that it is now a list system of some sort (and the outcome–a majority, but not a sweeping one, likewise suggests PR). However, the reference to voters’ “circling multiple candidates,” and especially to a ballot’s being invalid if insufficient names are circled, does rather sound more like the old MNTV.
As was the case yesterday on Iraq’s provincial electoral law, I am unable to tease out the needed details from available accounts. Two points, however, are evident: It must not be either “closed list where voters can vote only for political parties as a whole” and it also must not be the “single constituency,” as reported in the second article that Wilf refers to.
As with the last case Wilf reminded me of, Mongolia does not fit neatly into F&V orchard blocks. Is the country in East Asia? Central Asia? Yes.3
__________
- That is, it is of the “premier-presidential” variant of semi-presidentialism. However, somewhat atypically for premier-presidential systems, the presidency has a veto that requires a two-thirds majority to override. In fact, the veto appears to have a partial (line-item) provision, which I am not aware of existing otherwise outside of some US states, various Latin American countries, and the Philippines. [↩]
- It won a majority in both the 2001 and 2005 presidential elections. [↩]
- Though it certainly is not SW Asia or Oceania. [↩]
Now that’s a neat ballot format for either STV or open/ free list PR. Replace the Cyrillic “1″s (?) with squares and you’re cooking with gas.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 01 July 2008 @ 07:06
Thanks for this – I was wondering what system was used. I also found the above articles online, so am still puzzled, although the new system does appear to be MNTV/block vote as Matthew says. Does anyone know why they went with this, rather than the (closed) list PR system proposed in December? This is an interesting change – back to the furture?
Seed planted by Thomas Lundberg — 01 July 2008 @ 15:52
Things have not gone so well since the election. The opposition alleges fraud, there are protests and now a state of emergency. No results of the election have been released.
A Reuters story refers to the electoral-system change, but doesn’t say anything we did not already know: “But new election rules that changed the first-past-the-post system to one of multi-member constituencies have led to procedural problems and some confusion over how votes should be counted.”
Seed planted by MSS — 01 July 2008 @ 18:50
Via Lexis-Nexis, Suna news agency reported on 29 June:
That’s helpful. (I would note that it could hardly take several days to calculate PR-list results, even if it were a “complex form of PR.”)
Something from World Market Research Centre, 1 July, shows how not to do political risk analysis, given all we know from above, touting “The election has deepened the two-party democracy that has emerged in Mongolia after political liberalisation…” and “Provided that the MPRP has won the substantial majority expected, the election will pave the way for the long-stalled Mineral Bill to be pushed through parliament.”
Numerous reports surfaced before the election about allegations by the opposition of irregularities with the voter registry.
Alas, nothing turns up about the electoral system between the items that noted a draft law on national-district closed-list PR in December, and the vague references to multi-seat districts in recent days.
Seed planted by MSS — 01 July 2008 @ 19:09
Back in June, 2006, Andy Reynolds said:
Still, there was apparently a serious effort to change to single-district PR in December, 2007. And the report of a relatively close outcome in seats this time still leads me wondering if some compromise short of full “block vote” (what I prefer to call MNTV, or multiple nontransferable vote) might have been adopted.
I have written to Andy in the hope that he might know.
Seed planted by MSS — 01 July 2008 @ 19:33
It certainly doesn’t sound like PR. A classic statement of the evils of winner-take-all:
“The MPRP has won an overwhelming majority of the seats in the next Parliament . . . exit polls and independent surveys tended to show that the MPRP and the non-MPRP forces were again evenly matched . . . democratic forces cannot afford to dissipate their support. Election is a matter of arithmetic also. If anti-MPRP votes are divided, benefiting that party by default, the democratic forces must forget their petty and non-ideological differences. People cannot understand what kept the National New Party, the People’s Party, the Motherland Party, and the Civil Will Party away from the principal democratic force. By asserting their own individuality, they merely made democracy a loser. . . not a single nominee of any of the political groups that chose to leave the earlier Democratic Coalition has won. Their generals and foot soldiers alike have been wiped out, and we shall have to wait a while to see if they can resurrect themselves. But they managed to take enough votes away from the anti-MPRP bloc, if one had existed. Only the MPRP was left happy.
“The last five elections have clearly shown that only when its votes are not split can any grouping prevail. When Democratic forces took the lead in Parliament, in 1996, it was a direct result of the coming together of the two main democratic parties then, the Mongolian National Democratic Party and the Mongolian Social Democratic Party. This time, those that went their own way, claiming nevertheless to believe in the same principles, have hurt the Democratic Party by choosing to get hurt themselves.”
Seed planted by Wilf Day — 02 July 2008 @ 17:09
A draft proposal was introduced towards the end of last year to change to proportional representation, but the proposal was rejected.
“Mongolia’s foreign minister on Friday called for reform of the nation’s electoral system.
“She said proportional representation would improve the chances of success for smaller parties like hers.”
Ms Sanjaasuren Oyun, the Foreign Minister of Mongolia, is head of the Civic Will Party, Mongolia’s third party. In 2004 it ran as part of the opposition Motherland Democratic Coalition which won 35 of the 76 seats, resulting in a grand coalition. In 2006 after one MP crossed the floor the MPRP, with support of several small parties and defectors from the Democratic Coalition, formed a majority government. Apparently including Ms. Oyun, who seems to have gotten double-crossed.
Seed planted by Wilf Day — 04 July 2008 @ 22:56