Center for a New American Security

There has been some good blogging so far on the bigger picture political dynamics at play in the passage of the provincial elections law yesterday (final text here). Iraqologist wants to talk about something more arcane but still important: the vote allocation system described by the law. While it is commonly reported that the new law uses an "open list" system, in fact it uses something electionologists call "open list, proportional representation (OLPR)" They use a version of this system in Switzerland.

The first two Iraqi elections in 2005 were run under a "closed list (CL)" system. In this system, voters voted not for individual candidates but for lists--coalitions of parties--which were then allocated a number of seats proportional to their votes. These seats were then distributed according to preestablished rankings of individual candidates in each list. These rosters of names were supposed to be available to voters beforehand so they would know who they were voting for. In practice, however, many voters ended up not having access to these lists and thus had very little information about the leaders they elected.

The CL system has since been criticized by Iraqis and outsiders alike for multiple reasons. First, it severed the link between the voter and his elected representative and awarded a dominant role to the political party bosses who, rather than the voters, actually chose the representatives. This selection, unsurprisingly, tended to be based on patronage and loyalty and willingness to toe the line rather than competence or ability to represent constituents. Second, this system also over-encouraged consolidation and disproportionately punished small parties, and thus discouraged the open debate of differing political platforms. These two factors combined contributed to the sectarian-ization of the Iraqi elections and resulted in three big ethnocsectarian blocs--the UIA, Tawafuq, and the Kurds--receiving the lion's share of the votes.

Thus, the July 22 opposition parties have lobbied strongly for an "open list (OL)" system. The way OL is described in the media, and the way many assume it will work, is that, instead of people voting for lists, they will vote for individual candidates and the top vote-getting candidates will get seats. So if there are 41 seats on a provincial council (PC), the top 41 vote-getters will be awarded seats--simple. In this case you would avoid all the problems of the old law: individuals would be judged on their merits and political party affiliation would play much less of a role. Moreover, OL doesn't encourage consolidation at all. In fact, Iraqologist has heard electionologists cite this factor as the major disadvantage to OL, i.e. it results in divided governments that have little basis for unified action.

In any event, the new law is neither OL or CL but "open list, proportional representation (OLPR)." This system can be thought of as a kind of hybrid between OL and CL. First, voters can apply their one vote either to a candidate or a list. Once the voting is done, all the votes for both individuals and lists are then allocated to the lists to which those candidates belong. Seats on the PC are then alloted to the lists based on the percentage of votes the candidates on that list received. So if there are 41 seats on a PC, and ISCI's candidates sum total get 40% of the votes, ISCI will get 16 seats on the PC. Unlike the CL system, however, ISCI party leaders don't get to pick which of its candidates get those 16 seats--they go to the top 16 vote-getters among ISCI's candidates.*

OLPR is certainly much preferable to CL because 1) parties will rise and fall based on the quality of their individual candidates and 2) voters, not the party leaders, get to pick which candidates from the lists represent them. However, OLPR will still reward the big, organized and well-funded lists far more than a strictly OL system would. Iraqologist knows that in any elections anywhere, money, muscle, and organization are the name of the game, but we should at least go into these elections with our eyes open about how the PTB--ISCI, Da'wa, the PUK and the KDP--are still very likely going to end up on top, despite all the hopes the PTA have put into these elections, and about how the OLPR system is going to contribute to that outcome.

Let's use a hypothetical example to illustrate this. ISCI and Da'wa (running separately this go-round) both are going to go into, say, Nasiriya which will have, say, 35 provincial council seats up for election. They are both going to field strong lists of 35 candidates chosen (and likely paid) for their ability to deliver votes from their constituencies all the way down to the 35th guy. All 35 of each party's candidates are going to be strong and contribute a big chunk to ISCI and Da'wa's respective vote totals. Their opposition, by contrast, is a bunch of individuals and very small parties who are not united with each other (at least not yet).

So while if you had an OL system and therefore a straight contest for the votes in Nasiryia Village X between a local tribal leader, an ISCI guy, and a Da'wa guy, the local tribal leader might very well win on the strength of his qualifications, no matter how much financial support or organizational advantages his opponents had. But what is relevant in OLPR is the sum total of votes the party's candidates are able to garner. In other words, while the local leader in Nasiryia Village X may get enough votes that would rank him 14th on ISCI's list, #15 on the ISCI list is riding on the strength of the 20 ISCI candidates below him, i.e. on ISCI's ability to recruit and buy off good candidates down the ticket. In an OL system the guy wins a seat, but in an OLPR system where he's running against two well-funded, 35-candidate-strong lists, he loses. (The system for dealing with remainder votes/vacant seats also benefits the big parties, although those details are a bit too gnarly to get into in this post.)

The solution to this, of course, is for the random PTA independents and small parties to band together, recruit 35-candidate-strong tickets that will beef up their totals, and develop common anti-PTB platforms. Indeed, this is an intended outcome of OLPR, that it provides incentives for coalition formation in advance of the elections so you get a government that isn't just a bunch of 35 individuals with different agendas that could be produced by a strictly OL system. But is this going to happen in Iraq? Or is every little party going to stay little and be conquered, divided?** Iraq simply does not have mature, organized political parties besides the PTB. Civil society in Iraq is basically five years old and societal fragmentation is high. All of this is compounded by the fact that it all this organizing must now occur by January 31. Moreover, as discussed in the comments of an earlier post, the PTB own the security forces in many of the provinces and have already "shaped" the local political dynamics to their liking, and by their very presence intimidate the PTA and provide a disincentive to anti-PTB coalition building.

In any event, OLPR may work well in Switzerland, but it very well might not work in Iraq given its peculiar circumstances. Wouldn't a straight OL system have been better if the idea is to expand participation in Iraq's provincial governments? The result of OLPR could very likely be a lot of failed PTA expectations, the cementing of PTB dominance in the provinces, and, for all the hype and hope, an equally narrow and non-inclusive political order. Hopefully the PTA parties that have negotiated the passage of the law have thought through the implications of OLPR and are prepared to strategize accordingly. But Iraqologist is worried that the PTB have pulled a fast one. We'll see.

*The new law includes a provision (Article 11) designed to guarantee the representation of women that was absent in the 7/22 law. In this case, when ISCI is allotting its seats, it must appoint the top vote-getting woman to every third spot, regardless of many votes she got compared to the men. It's effectively two different lists, one for the men and one for the women.

**The first deadline for parties to band together in lists has passed, and IHEC doesn't have them up on its website yet, so Iraqologist believes this deadline has been extended. Once we see those lists, we'll have a much better sense of how things will play.