From the Washington Post, as quoted by Tom Round at an earlier planting:
In 2005, parties that got the most votes appointed members for seats. This time, an “open ballot” will allow voters to choose individual candidates within parties.
Of course, the article–which is actually quoting a UN envoy–propagates the common ignorance of how closed-list systems, including in Iraq in 2005 work*: parties “appointing” members, as if those elected members had not been nominated to their ranked positions on lists prepared before the election.
I continue to wonder, however, if this system really is open list, or something else. For instance, some time ago I had an e-mail from someone in Iraq–someone I do not know but who seemed to know what he was talking about–who said, in part:
We’re looking at an open list system with non-transferable votes–once a candidate receives enough votes to be elected, any extras do not accrue to his or her party.
This is similar to some vague references to “hybrid” that I quoted in the original discussion, liked above.
The quote from my correspondent in Iraq could be interpreted as SNTV, rather than open lists. What sort of list system throws away votes for a candidate beyond those needed to be elected? Or perhaps it is SNTV, but with pooling of losers’ votes, but not of winner’s surplus? That would be odd, but I suppose it is possible. (I have e-mailed back and hope to get a clarification.)
UPDATE: A post from September at a blog called Abu Muqawama has a description that reads for me as precisely open-list PR. However, he contrasts this “OLPR” system with one he calls “OL,” by which he evidently means what the rest of us would call SNTV. This terminological issue appears to be the source of the confusion that implies OLPR is a hybrid of PR and something else rather than just one of the alternative forms of list PR.
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* The only confirmed exception being Nepal’s recent election, apparently.
On Iraqi Provincial Elections
Instead of allowing the post-Saddam situation to transition to a new system that could start to consolidate, there was a conscious decision to let an institutional limbo emerge at the local level with the seeming attitude of “we’ll worry about local governance later.”
Scion grafted by PoliBlog — 25 January 2009 @ 14:52
Will Iraq’s provincial elections turn on national politics? Or candidate images?
While tomorrow’s election in Iraq is for provincial councils, and while it is by open-list PR (we think), one Iraqi observer things the outcome may turn on voters’ evaluations of the performance of national parties. Others expect the new electoral system to give voters a chance to shake up the political class, due to the candidate-based voting.
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 30 January 2009 @ 22:25
“The electoral system — proportional representation within each governorate — was supposed to be more “open” in 2009, in the sense that there would be a greater possibility for voters to influence the race by using their one vote either for an individual placed far down on a party list or by voting for candidates running as individuals (technically these are one-person lists). In practice, though, the choices will be limited because the Iraqi elections commission has decided not to print full party lists for distribution to voters, which means that those who wish to rank certain candidates higher than others will have to consult a grand table of correspondence in the polling station. Voters’ rankings will be undercut, in any event, because within the multi-member party lists that win seats, the elections commission will promote female candidates regardless of their vote tallies in order to achieve 25 percent women’s representation on the provincial councils. (The “closed list” advocates, the Kurds and the Supreme Council, actively used the gender quota as an argument against greater openness.) Counting rules, too, favor the established parties, because surplus votes for an individual candidate who has secured election are wasted, whereas those accruing to a party list will accumulate and benefit another candidate on that list. This is another reason why the change from 2005 may not be as marked as some have hoped.”
So says Reidar Visser, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of the Iraq website http://www.historiae.org.
But does a list candidate have to get a quotient, as in Sweden, in order to move up the list? What quotient? If it’s high, hardly anyone will move up. Or is it the Belgian system which is far more open?
It doesn’t sound like Finland’s open-list or Bavaria’s open-list-MMP where the list order means nothing. So it’s “flexible-list” rather than pure open, although flexible list seems to be consider a sub-species of “open list” in many places, as it seems to be used in Canada too.
Seed planted by Wilf Day — 31 January 2009 @ 16:54