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The Italian Bug: A Flawed Procedure for Bi-Proportional Seat Allocation

In: Mathematics and Democracy

Author

Listed:
  • Aline Pennisi

Abstract

There is a serious technical flaw in the newly approved Italian electoral law. The flaw lies in the method used to allocate the Chamber of Deputies seats to parties (or coalitions) within multi-member regional constituencies. The procedure stated in the law could produce contradictory results: it could end up assigning a party more (or less) seats than it is entitled to receive on the basis of the same law. At least two types of paradoxes may occur. Although they have been utterly overlooked in the debate over electoral reform, they can be critical in practice when trying to determine the actual seat allocation. The failure of the current Italian electoral law was inherited from the previous one but the consequences are worse. Moreover, a correction mechanism introduced into the law at the last-minute does not prevent it from producing contradictory results. The paradoxes that undermine the Italian electoral law are pointed out and a solution is proposed. A broad conclusion is that a more extensive use of mathematics in the design and evaluation of electoral systems would help identify flaws and deliver more transparent, logical and fairer electoral laws.

Suggested Citation

  • Aline Pennisi, 2006. "The Italian Bug: A Flawed Procedure for Bi-Proportional Seat Allocation," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: Bruno Simeone & Friedrich Pukelsheim (ed.), Mathematics and Democracy, pages 151-165, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:stcchp:978-3-540-35605-9_11
    DOI: 10.1007/3-540-35605-3_11
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Demange, Gabrielle, 2012. "On party-proportional representation under district distortions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 181-191.
    2. Paolo Serafini & Bruno Simeone, 2012. "Certificates of optimality: the third way to biproportional apportionment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(2), pages 247-268, February.
    3. Sebastian Maier & Petur Zachariassen & Martin Zachariasen, 2010. "Divisor-Based Biproportional Apportionment in Electoral Systems: A Real-Life Benchmark Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(2), pages 373-387, February.
    4. Paolo Serafini, 2015. "Certificates of optimality for minimum norm biproportional apportionments," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(1), pages 1-12, January.
    5. Friedrich Pukelsheim, 2014. "Biproportional scaling of matrices and the iterative proportional fitting procedure," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 215(1), pages 269-283, April.

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