Future European Parliament Elections: Ten Steps Towards Uniform Procedures

Abstract

Procedural steps for the European Parliament elections are proposed so as to achieve more uniformity among the national electoral provisions of the 27 Member States. The steps include the creation of a European Electoral Authority, the enhancement of the European party system, and the consolidation of the many diverse seat apportionment methods into the single equalityoriented divisor method with standard rounding (Webster/Sainte-Laguë). The introduction of semi-open list systems is addressed, as is the formation of a single European constituency for the election of an additional twenty-five MEPs. In the long run the translation of votes into seats could be carried out using the biproportional variant of the divisor method with standard rounding, in order to better mirror the structure of the European Union.

Biproportional scaling of matrices and the iterative proportional fitting procedure

“…In 2003, the Swiss Canton of Zurich adopted a doubly proportional system, the biproportional divisor method with standard rounding, see Schuhmacher (2004, 2011), and Balinski and Pukelsheim (2006). The method may be attractive also for other countries as studied by Pennisi (2006) for Italy, Zachariassen and Zachariasen (2006) for the Faroe Islands, Ramírez et al (2008) for Spain, and Oelbermann and Pukelsheim (2011) for the European Union. A computer program for the calculations is provided at www.uni-augsburg.de/bazi, see Pukelsheim (2004), Joas (2005), Maier (2009).…”