West Germany The first recorded use of a vote-transfer based mixed system was in British occupied West Germany. German opposition to a purely
winner-take-all system like
first-past-the-post, that the British preferred, necessitated a compromise. The vote transfer system which was of the "losers plus surplus model"
National Assembly (general elections) National Assembly elections use a positive vote transfer system, which also partially 'compensates' parties of winning candidates. The compensatory tier of the
National Assembly of Hungary is allocated to parties crossing a national 5% threshold. Votes of losing candidates as well as surplus votes of winning candidates are added to the list vote, making it a positive vote transfer system. Surplus votes are calculated by subtracting the result of the second-place candidate plus 1 from the result of the first place candidate, making the system similar to the Italian Chamber model of
scorporo. However, because there are effectively no votes transferred with a negative value, the system is not subject to the same decoy list tactics as scorporo is. Instead, when decoy lists were mentioned in the context of the Hungarian system, it was in reference to the proliferation of unknown parties with similar names to known parties, fielding decoy lists (and decoy
spoiler candidates) allegedly intended to confuse voters.
Local elections Local elections in municipalities and districts in the
capital with a population over 10 000 use a
mixed single vote with positive vote transfer, where only votes for losing candidates are transferred to the compensatory tier. The vote transfer takes place based on the party affiliation of the local candidates and seats are allocated proportionally based on the transferred votes. • Up to 25 000 residents 8 members are elected in SMDs and 3 members on the compensatory tier • Up to 50 000 residents 10 members are elected in SMDs and 4 members on the compensatory tier • Up to 75 000 residents 12 members are elected in SMDs and 5 members on the compensatory tier • Up to 100 000 residents 14 members are elected in SMDs and 6 members on the compensatory tier • Over 100 000 residents, the number of SMDs increases by 1 after every additional 10 000 residents, while the number of compensatory seats increases by 1 after every additional 25 000 residents. For the
2014 and
2018 elections, General Assembly of Budapest was elected by a kind of
mixed single vote, which served also as
double simultaneous vote. The 23 directly elected mayors of the districts (plus the
lord mayor) were
ex officio members of the assembly alongside 9 members elected from compensation-lists of parties based on the votes cast for the mayoral candidates (Budapest mayor candidates and district mayor candidates could be listed on compensation-lists). The system was criticized for effectively using the vastly differently populated districts as electoral districts each election one member. For the
2024 election, the system was reverted to a direct election using
party-list PR. Because of the comparatively few compensatory seats, the system does not guarantee proportional results and commonly underrepresents smaller parties, however theoretically, it could also underrepresent larger parties compared to a
list PR system.
Italy A negative vote transfer system called
scorporo was in force for elections to the bicameral
Parliament of Italy based on Law 277/1993 from 1993 to 2005. Under this system, members could be elected in two ways: • 75% of elected members were elected in single member districts (SMDs) using
first-past-the-post voting. • 25% of elected members were elected on list basis based on the proportion of the votes received by the party (using the
D'Hondt method), with the exclusion of a proportion of any first-placed winner's votes. The system was subject to the following specific rules for each chamber:
Senate • List seats were calculated at the regional level. • All votes for winning candidates were excluded from the list allocation. • No threshold was applied for list seats. • The SMD vote and the list vote were linked (
mixed single vote) limiting the use of decoy lists (see below).
Chamber of Deputies • The list seats were calculated at the national level. • The number of SMD winner's votes excluded from the list vote was equal to the second place candidate's vote total, representing the number of votes needed to elect the winner in the SMD (i.e. non-
wasted votes). • A 4% threshold was established for parties to qualify for the list seats. • The local vote and list vote were not tied to each other, thereby providing an incentive for
decoy lists (see below).
Abolition In the
2001 Italian general election, one of the two main coalitions (the
House of Freedoms, which opposed the Scorporo system), linked many of their constituency candidates to a
decoy list (
lista civetta) for the proportional component, under the name
Abolizione Scorporo (Abolish Scorporo). This list was not designed to win proportional seats, but only to soak up constituency votes for House of Freedoms, enabling them to win a larger share of the proportional list seats than they would be entitled to if all candidates were linked other House of Freedoms parties. This intentionally undermined the compensatory nature of the electoral system. As a defensive move, the other coalition,
The Olive Tree, created their own decoy list under the name
Paese Nuovo (New Country). This was facilitated by the fact that this particular scorporo system allowed the single-member constituency vote and the proportional list vote not to be linked. Decoy lists are a common issue in all compensatory and pseudo-compensatory systems, and this was not a unique problem for scorporo. Due to
Silvio Berlusconi's opposition to the system, Italy changed to a
majority bonus system in 2005. == Proposals, mixed ballots and hybrids ==