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If there was no prospect of Georgia Maloney coming to power, Romanians would not be talking about the elections in Italy (September 25, 2022) at all. It would be the same with France, if the heroes Le Pen and Mélenchon were not in the foreground. Little was said about Germany, where the potential for an election show has shrunk, and only because Angela Merkel’s long-term government is coming to an end.

Outside gossip– (pseudo)concerned, I think it would be useful to pay more attention to the “technical” aspects of elections in other countries to raise awareness of the problems of the electoral system in Romania. Let’s stop living with the impression that everyone is like us, when we don’t even know what we are! There are a variety of electoral systems in the world, which are the result of local ideals, interests, conditions, and which, once applied, ultimately influence, if not determine, them.

Italy has the richest electoral history in Europe. Over the past three decades, the electoral system has undergone numerous changes. Although formally they were all revisions of the 1957 law, the changes were serious. After a long period of “pure proportionality” (simplifying: how many percent of votes, so many percent of mandates for each party), parliamentary division and instability of the government, in 1993, in search of stability, was transferred to a predominantly majoritarian system. : 75% of deputies and senators were elected in one round, in collegiums of the same name (English: the first gets the mandate), and the rest – proportionally. was Read Mattarella or Mattarellum (by the surname of the then initiator deputy, the current president), which operated until 2005, when, wanting greater proportionality, but also the formation of a homogeneous majority, it was replaced by Read Calderoli (also said Porcelain, because the initiator himself considered it “bad”). Lists were voted on, percentages were calculated, but the party/coalition in first place automatically received the majority of mandates. This was the case until 2014, when the Constitutional Court declared that this “majority award” (“premio di maggiorgia”), granted without a minimum threshold of votes, represented a “serious change in democratic representation”.¹ and canceled it. And he said something else: that long and blocked electoral lists (like here, in Iasi, Cluj, Dola, etc.; not to mention Bucharest!) actually do not allow citizens to elect their representatives. The new law of 2015 (Italics) retained the “premio di maggiorgia”, but on the condition that the threshold of 40% of the votes was reached. This seems strange – perhaps reminding us of interwar Romania (also inspired by Italy) – but it was a common practice in Italy, and we still find it in Greece (parliamentary) and in France (regional and municipal). However, the Italian legislator in 2015 added something else: if no party/coalition reached the 40% barrier, a second round was organized between the best two (“ballottaggio”). In 2017, “il ballottaggio” was also ruled unconstitutional on the grounds that it distorted the intentions expressed in the first round. In the same year, it was adopted by a significant majority (but with opposition Movimento 5 Stelle) Rosato Law or Rosatellum², applicable in 2018 and currently in force. It developed hastily and under the sign of a temporary one, until the expected reform of the Senate. It is criticized in various ways, which can be summarized as follows: it distorts the will of the voters and does not guarantee a solid majority, so a stable government³. It is a mixed system, starting from the German model (half of the deputies are elected by majority, half – proportionally, plus proportional remuneration), but with significant changes. It originally applied to 630 deputies and 315 senators, but after the 2020 constitutional review, there will now be 400 and 200 respectively (for a population of approximately 60 million).

What is it about? A little more than a third of parliamentarians are elected by majority vote in single-nominal colleges, and the rest by voting according to proportional lists in multi-nominal colleges.

The country is divided into 28 constituencies for the House and 20 (according to regions) for the Senate (an external district is added, which is elected exclusively by proportional representation). Each of them includes a greater or lesser number of single-nominal collegiums (in total: 147 in the chamber and 74 in the senate), respectively multi-nominal (245 in the chamber and 122 in the senate). The latter range in size from 3 to 18 seats in the House and from 1 to 20 in the Senate.⁴since it is obvious that several homonyms correspond to each set.

A great feature of the Italian electoral system is the way coalitions are formed and function in elections. We are not talking about joint lists, but about “collegial” ones. Parties that have decided to form coalitions present their individual lists together (2-4 candidates each) and support one candidate in each single-member board. The main competitors in 2022 are two coalitions (from right center and from left center) and an individual party (M5S).

In the ballot papers, boxes appear containing the name of the candidate for the college of the same name and, where appropriate, the party list or lists of all parties that formed the coalition, with the corresponding symbols.

Unlike in Germany, voters are not allowed to vote “disgiunto”, meaning they cannot choose an individual candidate and party list other than “collegial” before that. They are limited by one limit. In the case of coalitions, they can elect a single individual candidate and a separate list from among the coalition. If not, their votes will be distributed proportionally to everyone (so more votes than voters are counted). Conversely, votes for any of the coalition lists are also counted for a single candidate, even if this is not explicitly stated.

It is obvious that the calculations are carried out in two rows. One in each single-member caucus, where candidates with the most votes without needing a majority are awarded seats, and one for multi-member caucuses, whose votes are totaled nationally, for the House, or regionally, for the Senate. .

In non-nominal majorities, as we know from the UK, the big parties/coalitions get the upper hand and the smaller ones don’t. In 2018⁵example, Center-right coalitiongaining 37% of the vote, received 111 out of 231 deputy mandates (48%), M5S, gaining 33%, received 92 (39.85), center-left22.86% and 28 (12.12%), and Free and Rival3.39% and 0.

Proportionally, the electoral threshold is 3% (per country) for individual parties and 10% for coalitions, provided that at least one of the constituent parties has more than 3%. In addition, for coalitions, all votes of lists with at least 1% are counted, but only those with more than 3% (plus minority lists with 20% in their regions) are retained in the allocation of seats. This is one of the reasons why parties prefer to form coalitions. The big ones use the votes of the little ones to get a few more seats. A small number, between 1% and 3%, give their votes to proportional (which they wouldn’t use anyway), getting support in a few non-parochial colleges instead. Better to win a little than nothing!

At the level of the entire country, for the House, and each region, for the Senate, it is calculated how many mandates each coalition and each party should receive, for the natural quotient/quotient method with the largest remainder rule. The total number of valid votes is divided by the number of mandates, obtaining the electoral coefficient. The votes of each/each party/coalition are then divided by a coefficient that results in the number of seats. Since the result is never exact, the remaining seats are awarded in order of the number of votes remaining. In 2018, 31,137,2225 votes (independent parties with more than 3% and coalition parties with more than 1%) were counted for 386 deputy mandates, which were to be distributed proportionally. So, the coefficient was:

Q = 31 1337 225 / 386 = 80 666 (decimals removed)

The electoral barrier was overcome by two coalitions and two separate parties, whose votes were divided according to the above coefficient for the distribution of mandates:

Center-right coalition: 12 152 345 / 80 666 = 150.65

M5S: 10,732,066 / 80,666 = 133.04

Center-left coalition: 7,138,015 / 80,666 = 88.48

Free and Rival: 1,114,799 / 80,666 = 13.81

So: 150, 133, 88 and 13 seats, for a total of 384 out of 386 to be distributed. The remaining two were distributed among the parties and coalitions with the largest residuals (as can be seen from the decimal places of the results above), i.e. 1 for free and 1 for Center-right.

Obviously, the operation must be repeated within the coalitions to determine how much each party receives. Finally, it should be repeated at the level of all constituencies and all multi-mandate colleges for the territorial distribution of mandates. The latter is a rather unstable arithmetical operation, a kind of crab, involving the allocation and then the withdrawal and redistribution of mandates in order to be able to ensure consistency with the overall indicators set at higher levels. As in the case of Romania, it happens that in certain areas parties with fewer votes have more seats. This, together with blocked lists and the possibility of nominating several candidates (“pluricandidature”, an old tradition in Italy and elsewhere, now limited to five plurinominal colleges) has led to the assessment that the Italian parliament consists of “more appointees than elected”. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro