DPLG

"MIXED" ELECTORAL SYSTEM REPLACES THE "PARALLEL" SYSTEM

One of the other important changes that will take place in the 2001 elections is the introduction of a "mixed" electoral system in municipalities where there are both ward and proportional representation elections.

This will replace the current "parallel system", where the ward and proportional representation voting systems run completely separately and there is no attempt to integrate the two sets of votes.

Although a mixed system is a little more complicated, it is designed to deepen local democracy. It also guarantees greater local stability by ensuring that parties with significant support are fairly represented in municipal government.

The main aim of a mixed system is to address the distortions caused by the winner-takes-all ward system. This refers to the first part of the mixed system - that is, using both ward (with part affiliation) and proportional representation votes for calculating proportionality. When calculating the allocation of proportional representation seats (50% of the seats on the council) the mixed system takes account of all votes cast for a party - votes for ward candidates affiliated to that party and votes for the party on the proportional representation ballot when calculating how proportional representation seats should be allocated.

Thus, a party that loses a ward election by a few votes will benefit from a mixed system because the votes it did receive will count when the proportional representation seats are allocated.

This means that, in the next elections, the number of seats a party is entitled to will be calculated on the basis of all votes. It will not matter whether these votes were cast directly for parties under the proportional representation system, or for politically aligned ward candidates. Votes cast for independents in wards will not be counted.

In other words, each seat will be worth a certain number of votes - and it will be irrelevant whether the party won these votes during ward elections or proportional representation elections.

Thus, if a party has already won the right number of seats - or even more seats than the proportion it deserves according to the total number of party votes cast - it will not be allocated any proportional representation seats. This refers to the second part of the mixed system - that is, the allocation of seats to parties to ensure that both ward and proportional representation seats are used in calculating overall proportionality. The vote quota formula (see Voting outside of metropolitan areas) will be used to determine how many votes are needed for a party to win a seat.

ON THE MIXED SYSTEM...

Seats will be allocated to parties in a way that ensures that the total representation of parties on the council, including ward councillors, corresponds to the total votes cast for any party. This system will ensure a more accurate reflection of voter preference in the composition of councils.

The "mixed" system - a summary

50% of seats are allocated to ward councillors.
50% of seats are allocated to proportional representation candidates.
The proportion of the total number of seats that each party is entitled to is calculated by counting all votes cast for each party, not only in the proportional representation vote, but also for ward councillors affiliated to parties. Votes for independent ward candidates are excluded from the overall calculation.

"Mixed" system: things to think about

Question: Will the "mixed" system exclude women? If proportionality should be calculated for all seats, could it result in some parties not having any candidates elected from their party lists if they won enough ward seats to ensure that they are correctly proportionately elected?

Answer: This could be a danger of the "mixed" system. Local government role-players should bear this in mind when choosing their candidates, and work hard to ensure that women are nominated to stand as ward candidates as well.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE MIXED ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Let's take an imaginary municipality, called Jabuleng. It is divided into 10 wards. There are 20 seats on Jabuleng council split 50-50 between wards seats and proportional representation seats, that is, 10 ward seats and 10 proportional representation seats.

First, let's see how the voting works in a single ward - ward 10:

Now let's see how the voting works in the whole municipality...

How many ward seats did the parties win?

The voting process in ward 10 is repeated in Jabuleng's nine other wards. And so we end up with 10 ward councillors elected to council.

We know that party B won the ward seats in ward 10. Here are the results from all the wards:

Party A won three ward seats.
Party B won three ward seats.
Party C won three ward seats.

We'll use these numbers later on to work out how many proportional representation seats the parties have won. But first we must add up all the votes cast for each party - both ward votes and proportional representation votes - as we see below.

The total number of seats each party has won

First, count the proportional representation and ward votes together
To calculate the parties' overall representation in the council (and the total number of seats they have won), each party's proportional representation votes and all their ward candidate votes are added together.

In Jabuleng, when the votes from all the wards are counted:
- Party A got a total of 1 000 proportional representation votes and 1 000 ward votes = a total of 2 000 votes.
- Party B got a total of 3 000 proportional representation votes and 2 000 ward votes = a total of 5 000 votes.
- Party C got a total of 3 000 proportional representation votes and 3 000 ward votes - a total of 6 000 votes.

TOTAL of 13 000 votes cast for all parties.

So, how many proportional representation seats do the parties get?

By subtracting the ward seats from the total seats for each party, we get the number of proportional representation seats that each party has won:

Party A won a total of three seats, but it already has three ward seats - so that's it, no more proportional representation seats.
Party B won a total of eight seats, it won three ward seats, so it gets five proportional representation seats to make the total of eight.
Party C won a total of nine seats, it won four ward seats, so it gets five proportional representation seats to make the total of nine.

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