Apparentment is the name given to the system, sometimes provided for in elections conducted according to the

party-list proportional representation Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a system of proportional representation based on preregistered Political party, political parties, with each party being Apportionment (politics), allocated a certain number of seats Apportionm ...

system, which allows parties to specify

electoral alliance An electoral alliance (also known as a bipartisan electoral agreement, electoral pact, electoral agreement, electoral coalition or electoral bloc) is an association of political parties or individuals that exists solely to stand in elections. E ...

s. The system has been used in Switzerland since 1919, and is also used in Israel and Denmark (local and

European Parliament elections Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by Universal suffrage, universal adult suffrage; with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are the second largest democratic elections in the world after Electio ...

only). Under list proportional representation, seats are awarded for each quota of votes obtained. Any votes excess to the quota are lost. Under apparentment, parties combine their vote excess, which may yield an additional full quota and candidate elected. For example, if there are 100 seats in the legislature, the quota per seat will be around 1%. If two parties poll 1.4 and 1.3 quotas respectively, they will probably only win one seat each if their votes are counted separately (assuming there is no further threshold, such as Germany's 5% barrier) but if they can combine their votes, they will have 2.7 quotas in total and a good chance of winning 3 seats overall. Usually the third seat would go to the party with 1.4% as it has more votes within the alliance. There are two possible types of apparentment: different parties within a single electoral district combining their results, or the same party competing in different electoral districts combining these results. In the election of the German Constituent Assembly in the 1920s, an unused vote could be used outside the original district to help a party get an additional seat. The system introduces an element of ordinality - a vote is first applied to elect a candidate or a party, then a group list. It is akin to a prespecified ranking in a preferential voting system like alternative vote or

single transferable vote The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vot ...

, as is used with the above-the-line system in Australian elections.

References

Proportional representation electoral systems {{Election-stub

See also

References