Albania votes, the formula decides

In the next Assembly of Albania, the highest representation will be held by voters of the Socialist and Democratic Parties, while many small parties, despite the votes they received, will not be able to win seats in the Assembly due to the electoral formula that was applied this time, the "proportional regional system".

Approximate data from the Central Election Commission (CEC) show that a Socialist Party mandate in government represents around 9.3 thousand voters, while an opposition coalition MP represents over 10 thousand voters.

On the other hand, Mr. Basha's Euro-Atlantic Coalition Party, although it received around 20 thousand votes, will not be represented in the Assembly. If these votes were on the side of the Socialist Party, they would translate into 4 mandates.

The most penalized are the voters of the "Initiative Albania Becomes" which has over 56 thousand votes and only secures one mandate in the Assembly. If these votes were for the Socialist Party, they would translate into 6 mandates.

The low representation of new alternatives in the next Assembly of Albania is due to the electoral formula of the regional proportional system, based on the "D'Hondt" methodology that favors the major forces.

"Our system has become locally proportional, to penalize new arrivals. In a national proportional system, new parties would succeed and be decisive for political majorities."

In regional proportional representation, the Socialist Party received 83 mandates, in national proportional representation it would have 72-74 MPs, parties with 3% would have to have 3-4 MPs, given that our electoral threshold is only 1% from 2021, previously it was 3%", analyzed Afrim Krasniqi, Executive Director of the Albanian Institute for Political Studies.

Neritan Sejamini, an economist and analyst, claims that the fact is that we have a regional electoral system, where elections are independent of each other. "In fact, we have 12 elections and not one election."

Given that the regions have completely unequal populations—from Kukës with around 62 thousand inhabitants to Tirana with around 760 thousand inhabitants, over 12 times larger than Kukës—and consequently different numbers of mandates, from 3 in Kukës to 37 in Tirana—the system manifests three main features, explains Sejamini:

"Electoral systems are never an automatic representation of the percentage of the popular vote in seats in the Assembly."

Like any electoral system (mainly through the establishment of electoral thresholds ranging from 2-3% to 10-12% in some rare cases) they punish very small parties in order to avoid the almost automatic fragmentation of parliaments. However, our system can be considered a system that has a high level of distortion of the will of the citizens and the fate of small parties.

This distortion becomes less understandable when regionalization has lost all practical sense since most of the district deputies have no significant connection to these districts. On the contrary, you have deputies who circulate from district to district in different elections. In these conditions, a national proportional system with a low threshold would be a better system than the one we have now”, says Mr. Sejamini.

Mr. Krasniqi explains that in proportional systems the legitimacy of the political force is more important than individual votes. The oldest democracies in the world are majoritarian.

Albania's electoral formula based on the proportional system is applied by EU countries such as Spain, Portugal and Belgium. This system in small countries like Albania makes the government more stable compared to neighboring countries that apply other formulas that favor the distribution of votes among more alternatives.

But on the other hand, this method burns the votes of new alternatives by not representing them in parliament. According to this system, a vote in Kukës in terms of mandate is worth more than a vote in Tirana. The formula helps political polarization and helps preserve the PS-PD duopoly.

Mr. Krasniqi says that Albania has been applying a proportional system since 2008. "This has resulted in us currently having MPs with over 21 thousand votes or even with 360 votes. The system is a matter of compromise, so a vote does not make the MP more important or weaker, but it means that the party is an institution, has a merit system and accountability.

He further analyzes that in our country not only is this prerequisite not respected, but the parties do not act as accountable and meritocratic institutions. The concern is also related to ethics and integrity: on the basis of which sovereignty and legitimacy does a deputy who is not voted for and does not represent act, and what value does a vote have in decision-making.

The electoral formula made votes more effective in large cities. For example, in Tirana the effective threshold to win a mandate was 2%, while in Kukës it rose to 19% according to the formula. In this way, the votes of small parties were valid only in large districts, while small ones remained without representation.

The new formula that was applied this year has also penalized the opposition, which has lost about 9 mandates, while the Socialist Party has gained about 9 mandates. Changes to the Electoral Code last year redistributed the number of mandates in the region, where Tirana received 1 more, while Korça lost 1 mandate.

The formula increased the loss of votes below the 1% threshold, which with the formula mainly translates into additional seats for the largest party./ Monitor