Part of the Politics series |
Electoral systems |
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Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can (effectively) only vote for political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some influence, that would be called an open list. Closed list systems are commonly used in party-list proportional representation, but most mixed electoral systems also use closed lists in their party list component.
In closed list systems, each political party has pre-decided who will receive the seats allocated to that party in the elections,[1] so that the candidates positioned highest on this list tend to always get a seat in the parliament while the candidates positioned very low on the closed list will not.
However, the candidates "at the water mark" of a given party are in the position of either losing or winning their seat depending on the number of votes the party gets. "The water mark" is the number of seats a specific party can be expected to achieve. The number of seats that the party wins, combined with the candidates' positions on the party's list, will then determine whether a particular candidate will get a seat.
List of locations with closed list systems
Closed list proportional representation
Algeria
Angola
Argentina
Armenia
Benin
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Colombia (depending on the party)
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic[2]
East Timor
Equatorial Guinea
Germany (mixed-member proportional representation)
Guatemala
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Hong Kong (1997-2016)
Iceland
Israel
Kazakhstan[3]
Kyrgyzstan
Lithuania (1992-1997) (Seimas and munipalities' councils)
Moldova
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia[4]
New Zealand (mixed-member proportional representation)
Nicaragua
Niger
North Macedonia
Paraguay
Portugal
Romania[5]
Rwanda
Serbia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Togo
Tunisia
Turkey
Uruguay
Closed list mixed electoral systems
See also
References
- ^ "Open, Closed and Free Lists —". ACE Project. Archived from the original on 28 June 2020. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
- ^ "{title}". Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-11-22. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
- ^ Lundberg, Thomas Carl (22 October 2010). "Post-communism and the abandonment of mixedmember electoral systems" (PDF). University of Glasgow. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 January 2021. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
- ^ "Elections - GRN Portal". www.ecn.na. Archived from the original on 2018-07-21. Retrieved 2018-07-20.
- ^ Filimon, Paul (20 July 2015). "Legea ALEGERILOR PARLAMENTARE pe LISTE, promulgată de Iohannis". România Liberă (in Romanian). Archived from the original on 2017-07-02. Retrieved 2018-05-24.
External links
- Country profiles at IFES
- Open, Closed and Free Lists at Ace Project