Singular Logic representatives said during a briefing Thursday at the Interior Ministry, that the uniqueness of Sunday’s elections – in which citizens will vote for a party and not for specific candidates, since the party tickets comprise lists of candidates in order of preference – is that the candidates that are elected will be known as soon as the collective results are in.
This is from Athens News, referring to an IT company that will transmit the early results of Sunday’s Greek elections from around the country.
The list type has been open, and I can’t see how it could have been changed in this interim since the 6 May election, but the quotation certainly suggests a closed list.
Also of interest:
A total of 21 parties and coalitions and 58 independent candidates will be vying for seats in the 300-member parliament with 4,873 candidates, compared with 31 parties and coalitions and 52 independent candidates with a total of 6,500 candidates that ran in the inconclusive general elections on May 6.
The wasted votes in the previous election–those cast for parties below 3% of the nationwide vote–were unusually high.
On the Athens News website there was a real estate ad: “Protect your money in Danish kroner”.
Seed planted by MSS — 15 June 2012 @ 22:27
Curiously, the law specifies that if an election was held during the previous 18 months, the list is closed instead of open. Unfortunately, laws don’t come with justifications or explanations, so we can only guess why that might be.
It’s Article 10 of the 2004 electoral law, which I provided a link to in some previous comment; it says in a very approximate English translation, courtesy Google Translate:
Seed planted by rici — 16 June 2012 @ 00:28
Is the order of candidates on the now-closed lists (a) decided afresh by the parties, or (b) set according to the personal votes the candidates polled last time around? IOW, are the Greeks treating the 2012A election as a “first round” for the 2012B “runoff”?
Seed planted by Tom Round — 17 June 2012 @ 01:53
The order of candidates on the closed lists is set by each list. It would be meaningless to talk of a Greek tradition in how these lists are drawn up, since the only precedent is the series of elections in late 1989/early 1990, and I’m not even sure that the “closed list on repeated elections” provision applied to those; however, using the previous election’s candidate ordering as a guide would seem like a reasonable approach for constructing a party list. (The party might also choose to favour incumbents, I suppose. Or it might take the opportunity to increase the number of women elected, but that’s a fantasy rooted in some other political culture.
)
Seed planted by rici — 17 June 2012 @ 13:25
Well, this would be a terrific research design opportunity! Thanks, rich, for confirming the “automatic” closed-list provision of the Greek electoral law.
Seed planted by MSS — 17 June 2012 @ 14:30
Thanks, Rici. I was curious about the legal rules for ordering the list. It sounds like there is no legal requirement to rank candidates from most to fewest personal votes at the previous election, and I am guessing no more than a weak political convention either. (Anecdotal evidence from other non-closed list systems suggests that a good personal vote is often rewarded by a higher list ranking at the next election.)
Seed planted by Tom Round — 17 June 2012 @ 20:11