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Reallocating Wasted Votes in Proportional Parliamentary Elections with Thresholds

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  • Th'eo Delemazure
  • Rupert Freeman
  • J'er^ome Lang
  • Jean-Franc{c}ois Laslier
  • Dominik Peters

Abstract

In many proportional parliamentary elections, electoral thresholds (typically 3-5%) are used to promote stability and governability by preventing the election of parties with very small representation. However, these thresholds often result in a significant number of "wasted votes" cast for parties that fail to meet the threshold, which reduces representativeness. One proposal is to allow voters to specify replacement votes, by either indicating a second choice party or by ranking a subset of the parties, but there are several ways of deciding on the scores of the parties (and thus the composition of the parliament) given those votes. We introduce a formal model of party voting with thresholds, and compare a variety of party selection rules axiomatically, and experimentally using a dataset we collected during the 2024 European election in France. We identify three particularly attractive rules, called Direct Winners Only (DO), Single Transferable Vote (STV) and Greedy Plurality (GP).

Suggested Citation

  • Th'eo Delemazure & Rupert Freeman & J'er^ome Lang & Jean-Franc{c}ois Laslier & Dominik Peters, 2025. "Reallocating Wasted Votes in Proportional Parliamentary Elections with Thresholds," Papers 2503.17156, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2503.17156
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Gibbard, Allan, 1973. "Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 587-601, July.
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