How Representation in the Knesset is Determined After an Election!
March 28, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod/
Some of you may be interested in how the Israeli voting system actually works and, even if you are not, you might consider keeping this Blog in case anyone ever asks you.
Lord willing, I will be putting up another Blog this afternoon on a quite different subject, and will take a look at the voting results tomorrow.
The following article by Dan Izenberg in the Jerusalem Post is detailed as to how
the voting system works.
How the Voting System Works
Dan Izenberg, THE JERUSALEM POST
March 28, 2006
• In translating properly cast votes into mandates, the first thing that must be determined is the “threshold,” that is, the minimum number of votes
that a party must receive in order to gain representation in the Knesset.
• The Knesset has passed a law setting the threshold at two percent. Therefore, a party must win at least two percent of all the properly cast votes in order to gain representation in parliament.
Votes that are not cast properly are discarded from the beginning and play no part in the calculation of the mandates.
• All the votes received by parties that do not pass the threshold will also not figure in any further calculations. They are, therefore, “wasted” votes.
• The total number of properly cast votes received by all the parties that exceeded the threshold is divided by 120 (the number of Knesset seats) to determine the numeric equivalent of one mandate.
The surplus votes remaining to each party after the final mandate has been accounted for are not considered in this first round of the calculations.
• Because of the surplus votes that each party receives and that are not taken into account in the first round of calculations, the number of mandates allocated in this round will fall short of 120. The question is, how are the remaining mandates distributed?
• In the second round of calculations, an “internal index” is established for each party, or for each pair of parties that has made a reciprocal vote-sharing agreement before Election Day. The internal index is determined by dividing the total number of votes the party has received, or the pair of parties has jointly received, by the number of mandates allocated to it in the first round, plus one. For example, if a mandate is estimated at 25,000 and a party or pair of parties receives 115,000 votes, the internal index will be the result of 115,000 divided by five.
• The remaining votes are distributed to those parties that have the highest internal index. The calculation is made one mandate at a time until all the mandates that were not distributed in
the first round have been allocated.
• When a pair of parties receives one extra mandate, the mandate will be allocated to the party that has the higher individual internal index between the two.
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