New electoral system will hopefully result in more proportional representation
SCOTT CITY - In Darmen's most recent elections, the United Left won 27.76% of the vote and 52 of the 219 seats (23.74%) in Parliament. The Republican Party won 26.38% of the vote, good enough for second place, but claimed 100 of the 219 seats, falling just 10 short of an outright majority! This result surprised even the Republicans, who had expected more competition from other parties in the single-member constituencies but ended up winning 41 out of 53.
Gallagher Index of
past Darmen ElectionsYear GIndx
2036 4.11
2041 8.89
2045 14.87
Almost as soon as Parliament had concluded the usual business that follows a general election: the election of its Speaker, confirmation of the President's Executive Cabinet, etc.; the Republicans, together with the United Left and Liberal Party, set about creating a package of bills that would fix the issues of the electoral system.
The first order of business was the elimination of the single-member constituencies. Under the old system, Darmen had 80 constituencies, 53 of which elected just a single member. While the electoral system has always been the d'Hondt proportional representation system, the election in single-member constituencies became de facto first-past-the-post. To eliminate that, Darmen will now be organized into just 14 constituencies, of which only one (the constituency representing Darmen's wizarding community) will be single-member. The remaining 13 constituencies will elect between 7 and 75 MP's, ensuring the d'Hondt method will be practical in those constituencies.
While two of those constituencies will be reserved for the representation of Darmeni Aboriginals and Darmeni citizens living abroad, the remaining 11 constituencies will be formed on a geographical basis. "It's possible," commented Edmundo Simmon, "that in the future, these geographical constituencies could form the basis for some level of devolved regional administration." Any implementation of regional government however will come later, as the present legislation deals exclusively with the electoral system.
The second major reform was a change to the format of the municipal councils, as well as the electoral system used to determine their membership. Under the old system, municipal councils ranged from 24 to 225 members, elected under a mixed proportional representation/majoritarian bonus system. The system was supposed to eliminate the chance that a council would end up under "no overall control," which it did indeed, but it also locked minor parties out of winning seats in the smaller constituencies. In the 62 municipalities with 24 seat municipal councils, the party finishing third gained representation (by means of a single seat) in just four municipalities. Under the new system, municipal councils will range from 7 to 25 seats, elected purely via the d'Hondt method.
The legislation was passed by a vote of 186-33. Opposition to the bill came in two fronts. The 23 MP's of the Fascist & Ultranationalist Union voted against after their proposal for the Parliament to be made up of 200 MP's elected from a single nation-wide constituency was turned down. The remaining 10 votes against came from parties who are only represented in a small number of municipalities, namely the Defiance Coalition, Islamic Union, Lista de Valladar and People's Party; who feared that the changes could make it harder for them to achieve representation by raising the threshold needed to gain seats.
The changes will be implemented for the first time in 2049, when Darmen holds its next elections.