Statement about the government-proposed rules for territorial distribution of majoritarian electoral districts
On November 26, 2015, a draft amendment to the organic law of Georgia “Election Code of Georgia” was registered in the Parliament of Georgia laying out new regulations for territorial distribution of majoritarian electoral districts for parliamentary elections.
The draft was proposed in reaction to the Constitutional Court’s ruling on May 28, 2015, declaring that the existing rules for determining boundaries of majoritarian electoral districts are unconstitutional as they fail to ensure equality of suffrage. Equality of suffrage is a widely recognized international standard that serves as one of the criteria of fair and competitive elections.
First and foremost, we must note that in view of its importance, election reform must be implemented with participation of all stakeholders and all changes must be approved based on majority support. With the ongoing reform, opposite seems to be true: none of the opposition parties or NGOs were invited to participate in drafting of the proposed new regulations.
The authorities should instead focus on alternative solutions, e.g. multi-member districts or the so-called German Model and others, which don’t require Constitutional changes and allow reaching of political consensus. The authorities are wrong to request comments about this proposal instead of requesting other proposals for redistribution.
We believe that the proposal itself is not the best solution of the problem, one that would address the underlying issues in the most effective way possible to ensure fair and competitive elections. Instead, it lays out questionable rules for dividing/combining municipalities to ensure compliance of the system with the ruling of the court. In particular,
In the reasons for its decision, the Constitutional Court stated: “maximum admissible departure from the distribution criterion adopted should not exceed 10%, except for special circumstances (a concentration of a specific national minority, a sparsely populated administrative unit), when the maximum admissible departure should not exceed 15%” (para.25).
The Constitutional Court allows 15% margin of error in special cases. In addition, the court makes reference to Venice Commission recommendation stating that “the maximum admissible departure from the distribution criterion adopted depends on the individual situation, although it should seldom exceed 10% and never 15%, except in really exceptional circumstances (a demographically weak administrative unit of the same importance as others with at least one lower-chamber representative or concentration of a specific national minority).”
This way, Constitutional Court allows maximum of 15% departure from the distribution criterion, while the Venice Commission allows above 15% departure in “really exceptional circumstances”. However, in the spirit of both recommendations, both 15% and above 15% rates of departure are allowed in exceptional and clearly defined cases only (demographically weak administrative units, areas densely populated by ethnic minorities).
The proposed draft falls short of both recommendations. In particular, it allows the departure rate of above 15% in 14 electoral districts (except for electoral districts in Tbilisi as boundaries of these districts are yet to be determined): for instance, departure rate of 15-20% is allowed 8 cases, while 20-80% is allowed in 6 cases. However, it is unclear as to how many of these electoral districts meet the criteria of “special circumstances”.
In addition, the draft allows departure rates from 10% through 15% in 21 electoral districts, i.e. the rates allowed in special circumstances under the Constitutional Court’s decision or in “really exceptional circumstances” under the recommendation of the Venice Commission. Subsequently, it is safe to conclude that none of the instances where 10%-15% departure rate is allowed meet requirements of the court or the commission.
The proposed draft divides/combines municipalities based on ambiguous principles and criteria. For instance, some of the electoral districts in Samtredia will be combined with Vani, while others will be combined with Khoni; as a result, Samtredia Municipality will not have its own majoritarian MP whereas in view of its population size (47,321) Samtredia fully meets with the principle of equal suffrage.
In addition, per proposed regulations, Mestia (8,315 voters) will not be combined with other municipalities despite its high departure rate of -82%, while Tsageri (11,425) and Lentekhi (5,916) will be combined to have a shared majoritarian MP. The basis of the above distribution is ambiguous.
In addition, we would like to reaffirm that the best solution to problems in the electoral system is scraping of majoritarian component of the system to move to fully proportional system of elections. This proposal was presented to the authorities on the basis of a large-scale consensus but the joint recommendation put forward by NGOs, political parties and experts was disregarded. We urge the authorities to express readiness to discuss all alternative solutions with participation of all stakeholders, in order to ensure that the new electoral system is fair and competitive.