The Amount of Unrepresented Vote
Election thresholds can sometimes seriously affect the relation between the percentage of the popular vote and seat distribution.
At the Russian parliamentary elections in 1995, with a threshold excluding parties under 5%, more than 45% of votes were unrepresented (in 1998, Russian Constitutional Court found the threshold legal, taking into account limits in its use).
A similar problem happened in Turkey, mainly due to the 10% threshold of the Turkish system, an extremely high value that is unique. Such a system was established with the justification of preventing multi-party coalitions and put a stop to the endless fragmentation of political parties seen in '60s and '70s. However, coalitions ruled between 1991 and 2002, mainstream parties continued to be fragmented and as a serious side effect, the 2002 elections caused 45% of votes (cast for below-threshold parties) to be unrepresented in the parliament.
In the Ukrainian elections of March 2006, for which there was a 3% (of the overall vote, i.e. including invalid votes) threshold, 22% of voters were effectively disenfranchised, having voted for minor candidates. In the parliamentary election held under the same system, as fewer voters supported minor parties the total percentage of disenfranchised voters in 2007 was only about 12%.
Election thresholds can produce a spoiler effect, similar to that in the First-past-the-post voting system, where minor parties unable to overcome thresholds take votes away from other parties with similar ideologies. Fledgling parties in these systems often find themselves in a vicious circle – if a party is perceived as having no chance of meeting the threshold, it often cannot gain popular support, and if the party cannot gain popular support, it will continue to have little or no chance of meeting the threshold.
By comparison, elections involving the ranked voting system can use the complete voter's indicated ranking preference. For example, the single transferable vote redistributes votes for candidates below the threshold. This permits the continued participation in the election process of those whose votes would otherwise be "wasted" and minor vote candidates are able to indicate to their supporters before the vote how they would wish to see their votes transferred. Ranked voting systems are widely used in Australia and Ireland.
Read more about this topic: Election Threshold
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