Election threshold
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In party-list proportional representation systems, an election threshold is a clause that stipulates that a party must receive a minimum percentage of votes, either nationally or within a particular district, to get any seats in the parliament. The effect of the threshold is to deny small parties the right of representation, or force them into coalitions. Many people hold that this makes an election system more stable by keeping out radical factions. It is also argued that in the absence of a preferential ballot system supporters of minor parties are effectly disenfranchised and denied the right of representation by someone of their choosing.
In Poland's Sejm and Germany's Bundestag (elected through the Additional member system), this threshold is 5% (or 3 constituency seats in the Bundestag, but directly won constituencies are kept, regardless), while it is 2% in Israel's Knesset (it was 1% before 1992 and 1.5% from 1992-2003), and 10% in the Turkish parliament. In Poland, ethnic minority parties do not have to reach the threshold level to get into the parliament, and so there are 2 German minority MPs in the Sejm. Also, there are countries, like Portugal, Finland, the Netherlands and Republic of Macedonia, that have proportional representation systems without a threshold, although for example the Netherlands has a rule that the first seat can never be a remainder seat, which means there's an effective threshold of 100% divided by the total number of seats.
Countries can have more than one threshold. For example, Germany, as mentioned earlier, has a "regular" threshold of 5%, but if 3 constituency seats are won in the Bundestag, the party can get additional representation with less than 5% of the vote. Most multiple-threshold systems are still in the proposal stage. For example, in Canada, one proposal to reform the electoral system would see a 5% national threshold, 1% of the vote and 1 seat in the house of commons, or 2% nationally and 15% of the vote in any one province.[citation needed]
Election thresholds are often implemented with the intention of bringing stability to the political system. However, they can sometimes seriously affect the relation between the percentage of the popular vote and seat distribution. A striking example is Turkey. The 10% threshold in Turkey was established mainly to prevent multi-party coalitions and put a stop to the endless fragmentation of political parties seen in '60s and '70s. However, coalitions ruled between 1991 and 2002, mainstream parties continued to be fragmented and as a serious side effect, the 2002 elections caused 45% of votes (cast for below-threshold parties) to be unrepresented in the parliament. For these reasons some people feel that the side effects of election thresholds (including the effective disenfranchisement of anyone who supports a "fringe" party) are worse than the problems they counter. In Ukraine with a 3% threshold during the March 2006 elections 22% of voters were disenfranchised having votes for minor candidates. One candidate Natali Vintrenko had receievd over 3% of the formal vote but failed to obatin 3% of the overall vote which included informal ballot papers (Votes that were blank or incorrectly filled out) the resulting outcome being that parties above the 3% threshold representation was increased above the percentage of voters support.
Election thresholds can cause a spoiler effect similarly to the First-Past-the-post voting system, where minor parties who can't overcome thresholds take votes away from other parties with similar ideologies. Fledgling parties in these systems often find themselves in a vicious circle - if a party perceived as having no chance of meeting the threshold, it often cannot gain popular support, and if the party cannot gain popular support, it will continue to have little or no chance of meeting the threshold.
By comparison elections that include a Preferential voting system permit votes for candidates below the threshold to be redistributed according to the voters indicated preference allowing the voter to determine the allocation of their vote. This allows for the continued particpation of minor supported candidates who can recommend the allocation of preferences and voting for alternative candidates. Preferential voting is widely in use in Australia and Ireland.
