Mechanics of Winning Electoral Seats in Somaliland Elections
There are six electoral regions with 23 electoral districts and 22 municipalities (Grade A, B, & C) with enormous municipal districts in the Republic of Somaliland. 236 municipal councilor and 82 parliamentary seats are due for grab in the last week of May of this year throughout the country.
Before the elections, each political party provides a list of candidates for each region for the House of Representatives (HoR) and another list for each municipal district. Somaliland citizens vote for a candidate of their choice from one of those lists depending on their political party affiliation. Candidates in the parties’ lists get seats in order of votes received. Multiple winners from each region for the House of Representatives and for each municipal district could be possible.
Votes casted for a particular candidate in the municipal or parliamentary elections in Somaliland do not necessarily directly determine the winning or the losing of a seat for that particular candidate. The Seats are allocated to parties proportionally to the total number of votes received out of the total votes casted in the regional or municipal district. In other words, total votes casted in favor of a political party has more weight than votes casted in favor of an individual candidate in the seat allocation process. When the winning of municipal or parliamentary seats depend on the percentage of the total number of votes received by the party, it happens that a candidate with a large number of votes loses while another with small number of votes wins a seat.
For instance, if total votes casted in the Maroodijeh region for its 20 seats in the parliament stands at 212,634 votes and the votes received by Kulmiye, Ucid, and Wadani come to 117,540 votes, 36,682 votes, and 63,577 votes respectively, the percentage of votes received by Kulmiye out of the total votes casted in the region would be 55.27% {(100 X 117,540)/212,634}, thus entitling it to win 55% of the 20 seats in the region {(20X55)/100} which works out to be 11 seats. Similarly, Ucid and Wadani would proportionally grab 6 and 3 seats respectively for their total votes received.
A phenomenal turnout for a single candidate can tremendously help a political party by offsetting the low turnout of other candidates and increasing the total votes in favor of the party.
In the illustrative chart focusing on the disadvantage of this method, 16 candidates of Kulmiye party each got in excess of 3,000 votes yet just 11 candidates won seats, where those got 6,401 votes, 5,400 votes, 4,948 votes, 4,980 votes, 4,804 votes might have effortlessly won seats if individual direct votes casted had been used in deciding the losing of or winning of seats. On the hand, a candidate of Ucid with just 3,002 votes and three candidates of Wadani with 4,325 votes, 4,151 votes, and 3,891 votes individually won seats.
Such disadvantage just clarified with the above outline is reflected in the allocation of parliamentary seats in 2005 House of Representative election, candidates with huge number of votes lost while others with less number of votes won seats because of the process in use for the seat allocation
Ahmed J Yassin
Jacksonville, Florida USA