The jockeying has begun, and before you know it as many as one in five of us will be voting in the European elections next May.
To get ahead of the game, it’s worth reminding how the European Parliament selection and election process works, as it can vary from one member state to another.
Below is a helpful extract from a European Parliament “Fact Sheet” from earlier this year, explaining it all for the benefit of the unwashed.
For those acquainted with the rules of the “Mornington Crescent” game on a long-running BBC radio panel show, which includes such variants as “Stovold’s 2nd Amendment to the Standard Convention (1972)” and “Hooper’s Mainline Variation”, the below may make more sense than to the uninitiated.
Ready?
“Most Member States have adopted the d’Hondt rule for allocating seats. Germany uses the divisor method with standard truncation called Sainte-Laguë/Schepers and Luxembourg a variant of the d’Hondt method, the Hagenbach-Bischoff method. In Italy seats are allocated by the whole electoral quota and largest remainder method, in Ireland and in Malta by the single transferable vote (STV-Droop), in Greece by the weighted method of proportional representation known as ‘Eniskhimeni Analogiki’, and in Sweden, as in Latvia, by the SainteLaguë method. In Slovakia and in Cyprus a system based on the Droop method and the highest remainder is used, and in Lithuania the Hare system combined with the highest remainder calculation.”
Glad that’s cleared up.
Work out who your elected representative is going to be with this handy formula
BM
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