Lex Libertas

The date for Parliamentary elections in Russia has been set for December 1st. Sean summarizes:

Russia’s Duma is based on proportional representation. For parties to gain seats they must get at least 7 percent in the polls–a slightly higher threshold than the previous 5 percent.

There are fifteen parties listed as eligible, but according to polls, only United Russia, Just Russian, the Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party will win enough votes to gain seats.

The parliament used to be half-elected based on party lists, and half on single-member districts. That meant that 225 seats were open to proportional representation, based on the aggregate total of votes for parties nation-wide. If, for example, Party A got 35% of the national popular vote, then they would receive 40% of the 225, or 90 seats. It was slightly more complicated, because you didn’t count the votes for any parties that didn’t make it over 5%. Thus the main parties actually got a few more seats than their percentage indicates.

The other 225 were based on geographical districts each electing a deputy (member of Parliament), like the the American House of Representatives. This meant that it was possible for a party that didn’t break the 5% barrier to proportional representation to get people in parliament if elected in the single-member district.

After the last elections, they decided to make the whole body elected by proportional representation based on the national vote. This means that individual members will now all owe allegiance to the party, and not to any specific citizens. This means that citizens will have no one person to turn to as a representative to the Federal Government, and entrenches power in the hands of the few people who run each party.

In a proportional system, each party makes up lists of candidates. The numerical order is vitally important. If a party gets, for example, 230 seats, the the first 230 people on the list become deputies. You can gauge someone’s importance in the party by their position on the list. The more important you are, the higher your name on the list, thus increasing your chances of getting a seat in Parliament. As such, the main people in each major party are guaranteed seats, and accordingly jobs and power. You could never have a situation in this system as what happened in the US, when the leader of the Senate Democrats was voted out of office. Also, people in the party become much more dependent on the party leadership. It is they who determine your ranking on the list. You cannot disagree with your party based on the interests of your constituents (as often happens in the US Congress), because you don’t have any. You instead must do all you can to ingratiate yourself with the party leaders. No matter how popular you may be with the people, they don’t put you in office.