Democracy Building: Election Systems

Switzerland's Refined Proportional Representation System

There is and endless debate on proportional vs. majority election systems. Some interesting
peculiarities in Switzerland's election system refine a basically proportional election system in a
unique way so that it features the essential positive aspects of the majority election system while
avoiding it's fundamental drawbacks. The Swiss system allows voters who take the time to choose
individual candidates while those wishing to simply vote for a party can do so.
Switzerland is a federal state with 26 cantons of different size (15,000 to 1,240,000 inhabitants)
with far reaching rights of autonomy including cantonal parliaments and governments. For
historical reasons, constituencies for Switzerland's National council (larger chamber of parliament)
correspond basically to the cantons, so that five small cantons may send only one deputee to the
National council, while the largest may send more than 30 deputees.
This article deals with the procedures applying for the majority of constituencies where more than
one seat is to be allacoted. More or less the same procedures are used to elect cantonal parliaments.
Minor differences among cantonal procedures are due to the fact that cantons have been a
"playground" to test refined rules and new democratic procedures for almost 200 years. While the
impact of changes is limited on the cantonal level, the way politicians and citiziens are dealing with
new rules in practice can be assessed in detail. When it comes to implement changes on the federal
level, discussion is based on known facts rather than on ideological arguments.

Basics: lists and candidates

As in any proportional election system, a number of political parties are the key players. They
represent different views on how public affairs should be dealt with and how tax money is to be
raised and spent. Parties may nominate candidates and put them on a list. The seats are allocated to
parties according to the number of votes each party gets.
Other proportional election systems are based on a simple "choose your preferred party and put
their list into the box" principle, parties are allocated a number seats and individual members of
parliament are assigned according to the position they have on the list. While these systems are easy
to understand, they have a serious drawback: they don't allow voters to choose what kind of
personalities are going to represent them.
This is where the specific add-on features of the Swiss system come in: while the principle of
parties presenting candidates on lists still applies, Swiss voters may alter these lists in several ways
in order to choose individual candidates. Basically voters get a set of party lists by mail some weeks
in advance to the election date. Typically there are between 10 and 20 party lists, depending on the
number of parties actively participating in the elections and one blank list to choose from.

Cancelling
The first and simplest of these feature is called cancelling: Voters may cancel any candidates they
don't like on the list of there preferred party. While this does not change the weight of the vote for
the party as such, it will be used to determine which candidate(s) of this party will actually get the
seat. This feature helps to eliminate extreme candidates that may be good at influencing decision
makers in their party, while having problems to convince even a majority of the party's followers.

Cumulating
The second feature works the other way round and is called cumulating: Each candidate may be put
on a list once or twice The total number of candidates' names on a list must be less or equal to the
number of parliament seats in the constituency, however. So in order to cumulate a candidate on a
given list, another candidate must be cancelled.

Voting for candidates from different parties

Voters have even more possibilities to vote for individual candidates they prefer: candidates from
another party may be written onto the chosen list of the preferred party. Of course, there must be a
free line on the list to do so - or one of the names printed on the list must be cancelled first to create
a free line. Candidates from other parties may be cumulated, too, as long as there are free lines to
place them.

How the votes are counted

Basically, the valid votes for individual candidates are counted regardless of the list they appear on -
whether printed or cumulated by hand or brought in from the list of another party. Then all votes for
candidates of a certain party are added, plus the blank lines on lists with less candidates names than
seats to be allocated, as long as there is a party label in the header of the list. If a printed party list is
used, the header is already printed; if voters choose to use the blank list they may put a party name
to the header, or they may leave the header empty. In the latter case, blank lines are not counted. So
if voters cancel individual candidates from a party list, this won't affect the number of votes for this
party, it will only have effects on the ranking of the candidates within their party. Putting candidates
of another party on a list reduces the number of votes for this list, however, while it gives votes to
the party of these "cockoo" candidates.
Once the number of votes for the parties is added up, the seats are allocated to the parties
proportionally to the number of votes. In the next step, the most popular candidates of each party
will be chosen.
Example
Let's assume there is a constituency with 5 seats to be allocated and there are three parties A, B and
C participating in the election. Parties A and B are big ones, they present lists with five candidates
each (a1, a2, a3, a4, a5 and b1, b2, b3, b4, b5). Party C is smaller, on their list there are only 2
candidates c1 and c2, each already cumulated, plus a blank line.
We may assume that a relatively large number of voters will choose one of these three party lists
and put it into the election box without changes, for example 42,000 choose party A, 32,000 choose
party B and 11,000 choose party C.
For party A we assume that 4000 voters use list A, but cancel candidate a5, 3500 use list A, but
cancel candidate a1, 2500 use list A, but cancel candidate a2 and 1000 use list A, but replace
candidate a5 by candidate a4 (cumulated).
For party B we assume that 2500 voters use list B, but cancel candidate b4, 1500 use list B, but
cancel candidate b2, 1000 use list B, but cancel candidate b1 and 1000 use list B, but replace
candidate b4 by candidate b3 (cumulated).
For party C we assume, that 1000 voters use list C, but cancel candidate c1 once, and 1000 voters
more cancel candidate c1 twice. Note that these voters may not cumulate candidate c2, since his
party has already put him twice on the list. Practical experience shows, that this 'pitfall' will cause to
a few, but not too many invalid votes. It seems that an overwhelming majority of those voters using
the specialities like cancelling, cumulating and voting for candidates from different parties are able
to handle the intricacies involved, while those who would be overstrained with that simply use an
unchanged list.
Next possibility to be considered in this example: Some voters will use the blank list and write
candidates from different parties on it. If they leave at least one blank line, it would even make
sense to put a party name as header in order to have the blank line counted for this party. In our
example we assume that 1000 voters choose a blank list and write candidates a5 and b4 twice and
candidate c1 once.
Last, but not least, an example of bringing in a candidate from another party: We assume that 1000
voters use list A, but they replace candidate a1 by candidate b3 and 1000 voters use list B, but they
replace candidate b2 by candidate c2.
Votes from lists of type
Candidates Mixed Total votes
Unchanged Cancellations Cumulations Blank
parties

a1 42,000 6,500 1,000 0 0 49,500

a2 42,000 7,500 1,000 0 1,000 51,500

a3 42,000 10,000 1,000 0 1,000 54,000

a4 42,000 10,000 2,000 0 1,000 55,000

a5 42,000 6,000 0 2,000 1,000 51,000

blank lines 0 10,000 0 0 0 10,000

Total party A 210,000 50,000 5,000 2,000 4,000 271,000

b1 32,000 4,000 1,000 0 1,000 38,000

b2 32,000 3,500 1,000 0 0 36,500

b3 32,000 5,000 2,000 0 2,000 41,000

b4 32,000 2,500 0 2,000 1,000 37,500

b5 32,000 5,000 1,000 0 1,000 39,000

blank lines 0 5000 0 0 1,000 6,000

Total party B 160,000 25,000 5,000 2,000 6,000 198,000

c1 22,000 1,000 0 1,000 0 24,000

c2 22,000 4,000 0 0 1,000 27,000

blank lines 11,000 5,000 0 0 0 14,000

Total party C 55,000 10,000 0 1,000 1,000 67,000

Grand total 425,000 85,000 10,000 5,000 11,000 536,000

Table 1
Allocation of seats to parties
In a first round, the number of valid votes (in our example 536,000) is divided by the number of
seats (5). To win a seat in the first round, a party needs 107,200 votes. So party A is assigned two
seats and party B one seat. To allocate the remaining two seats, the remaining votes (271,000 -
2*107,200 = 56,600 for party A, 198,000 - 107,200 = 90,800 for party B and 67,000 for party C) are
considered. So party B is allocated a second seat and party C one seat.
Allocation of seats to candidates
Elected individual votes party strength

a4 55,000 50.6 %

a3 54,000 50.6 %

b3 41,000 36.9 %

b5 39,000 36.9 %

c2 27,000 12.5 %
Table 2
Comparison to standard proportional and majority election systems
From the result of our example election we see clearly that the Swiss system preserves both the
obvious advantages of the proportional election system and the advantages of the majority election
system: There is a proportional representation of a reasonable number of parties (not just two),
nevertheless the most convincing candidates do have a fair chance to be elected even if their party
chooses not place them on top of their list.
What would be the outcome of the same election, if the majority election system or a usual
proportional election system had been used instead? The answer given in table 4 below is based on
the fact that voters will most probably make different choices adapted to the particular
characteristics of the election system used. That said, let's see the basic trends anyway.
To have a comparison with the majority election system we have to make a few realistic
assumptions. Our example constituency would be divided into five small constituencies of more or
less same size (107,200 active voters) and voters would have to choose from candidates a1, b1, c1
in constituency 1 and from candidates a2, b2, c2 in constituency 2 etc.
As small parties usually can be established in cities more easily than in rural areas, it makes sense to
assume that one of their candidates comes from the city, the other from the suburb and the majority
of the 65,000 voters supporting the party (not counting mixing) come from those two areas as well.
In the more rural constituencies for a majority election, the party will not be able to find candidates
and their followers have to choose between parties A and B. So the overall numbers of votes for
parties A and B will be slightly higher at the cost of party C in a majority election system. Further,
let's assume party A is more popular among the urban and suburban population while party B is
more popular in rural areas.
Based on these considerations, a realistic outcome in a majority election system might look like
this:
Constituency Constituency Constituency Constituency
Candidate Constituency 5
1 2 3 4

a1 65,600 - - - -

a2 - 54,000 - - -
a3 - - 56,000 - -

a4 - - - 52,200 -

a5 - - - - 51,800

b1 31,800 - - - -

b2 - 44,200 - - -

b3 - - 51,200 - -

b4 - - - 55,000 -

b5 - - - - 55,400

c1 9,800 - - - -

c2 - 9,000 - - -
Table 3
On the level of party representation the strongest party, A, would probably win a third seat in a
majority election system, while party C would not be represented in parliament.
A closer look on the candidates shows - and this may come as a little surprise - that even the
majority election system would not necessarily result in selecting the most popular candidates from
parties A and B, while the Swiss system does! Table 5 shows the elected candidates for the three
election systems as well as the number of votes they get in the Swiss system (as a means to compare
their popularity).
Majority system Proportional system Swiss system

Candidate votes Candidate votes Candidate votes

(49,500 (49,500
a1 a1 a4 55,000
) )

(51,500 (51,500
a2 a2 a3 54,000
) )

(54,000 (38,000
a3 b1 b3 41,000
) )

(37,500 (36,500
b4 b2 b5 39,000
) )

(39,000 (24,000
b5 c1 c2 27,000
) )
Table 4

Cantonal variants
Please note that there may be slightly differing rules for elections on cantonal (federal state) and
communal level. All 26 Swiss cantons have their own constitution and are free to choose their own
detailed procedures within some guidelines given by the federal constitution. The cantonal level has
been a "laboratory" for testing new rules for almost 200 years. Almost any particularity of
Switzerland's unique system of democracy - regarded as a privilege by most Swiss citizens
irrespective of their political and ideological preferences - has been tested on cantonal level before
it was introduced on the federal level.
Conclusion
Though the refined proportional election system used in Switzerland may look a little bit
complicated at first sight, long-term experience shows that voters are able to express their political
will quite precisely using this system and there is no higher degree of invalid ballots than in other
election systems. The Swiss system combines the advantages of both the proportional and the
majority election system while avoiding their major shortcomings. In most cases those candidates
that really convince the electorate have will get elected, while in other systems, even in the majority
election system, internal party considerations have more influence