Israeli parties, who have been preparing their party lists for the elections in February, have nominated the largest-ever number of ex-journalists to list ranks from which they may be elected.
One journalist on the Labor list, Shelly Yachimovich, says that journalism prepares people for politics far better than does academia or the army.
There is a caution in order, however:
Former Davar editor Danny Bloch, for instance, believes there ought to be a cooling off period for journalists entering politics. Otherwise, he warned, readers will begin suspecting that journalists’ coverage of political parties is influenced by their desire to secure a safe slot on a given party’s slate.
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‘… MK Uri Ariel, whose resignation from the Jewish Home precipitated the convergence of the other parties into the National Union, [...] emphasised that the fact that the religious-Zionist camp is running with two heads – the Jewish Home and the National Union – is likely to be a blessing. He said that both parties have supporters who would not vote for a merger of the two, thus that running separately would salvage those votes. “We plan to have a surplus-votes agreement with the Jewish Home,” he said, “thus that together we will gain votes and lose relatively few.” Two parties signed on a surplus-votes pact agree that if each receives enough for an extra partial-seat in the Knesset, the party with fewer such surplus votes would “contribute” them to the other, possibly enabling the latter to receive an extra seat…’
- Hillel Fendel, ‘Ketzaleh: “We’ll Increase Our Knesset Strength”,’ Daily Israel Report (January 5, 2009)
Interesting that they use the expression “surplus votes”, which is normally associated with STV-PR rather than List-PR. However I guess that what they would be agreeing to is, for all practical purposes, the equivalent of a “preference swap” in an election under the stage-managed version of STV (Australia’s gift to the world).
Seed planted by Tom Round — 06 January 2009 @ 05:07
In a quota/largest-remainders list PR system, you could call the remainders ‘surplus votes’, I suppose. But I don’t think this is the system used in Israel.
Does anybody know of an accurate resource describing the mechanism of surplus vote agreements? I seem to recall that Israel uses d’Hondt allocation, and the surplus vote agreements cause parties to combine their votes for this initial allocations. Then, the parties split their combined seat total.
But this doesn’t sound quite right. Why would this restrict such agreements to just pairs of parties? And what constraints are there on how to do the sub-allocation within an agreement? (I vaguely remember different pairs using different formulas for sub-allocation.)
Seed planted by Vasi — 07 January 2009 @ 15:45
Well, even highest-average systems use “quotas” too – not just in the Hagenbach-Bischoff sense (ie, allocate as many seats as you can first using full Hare or Droop or Imperiali quotas, to save time, so’s you don’t have to do them all one by one), but also in that, after all the seats have been allocated using divisors, it’s possible to identify a “d’Hondt quota” or “St-Lague quota”, this being the largest number that will allocate exactly the right number of seats if you allocate one seat per whole quota (d’Hondt) or per whole quota or remainder over 0.5 (St-Lague). Unlike the quota in a largest-remainder system of PR, it’s determined empirically, after knowing how the votes were distributed, rather than a priori, knowing only the number of votes cast and of seats vacant.
So in this sense, even if Israel uses averages/ divisors, one could still speak of “surplus” votes. I presume they’re simply talking about joint lists or apparentement (ie, allocate seats to the whole bloc or coalition, then sub-allocate to the member parties) rather than an actual order of preference as under STV or South Australia’s preferential-list version (“First Kadima, then Likud…” etc).
Seed planted by Tom Round — 07 January 2009 @ 19:47
The entire paragraph about seat allocation, from the Knesset website, is:
I am not sure if that fully answers the question, but it does confirm that the system is currently D’Hondt and that the “surplus” agreements concern only cases where a party may have votes left over after allocation, but not enough for another seat. Or, more precisely, where two such parties have such votes and an agreement to pool them. Is that apparentement? I would think not, as I always understand (though perhaps not correctly) that term to mean a pooling over the full allocation process, as if they were one list for purposes of interparty (inter-list) allocation.
The law also allows two or more parties to present an “an alignment,” but this would actually be a single list, not an agreement between separate party lists (see paragraph immediately above the one quoted).
I have no idea what, if any constraints, exist on how parties divide among themselves any additional seats they obtain through “surplus” agreements.
Seed planted by MSS — 07 January 2009 @ 20:05