Closed list in the context of "Party list"

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⭐ Core Definition: Closed list

Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can effectively vote for only political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some influence, that would be called an open list. Closed list systems are still commonly used in party-list proportional representation, and most mixed electoral systems also use closed lists in their party list component. Many countries, however have changed their electoral systems to use open lists to incorporate personalised representation to their proportional systems.

In closed list systems, each political party has pre-decided who will receive the seats allocated to that party in the elections, so that the candidates positioned highest on this list tend to always get a seat in the parliament while the candidates positioned very low on the closed list will not. However, the candidates "at the water mark" of a given party are in the position of either losing or winning their seat depending on the number of votes the party gets. "The water mark" is the number of seats a specific party can be expected to achieve. The number of seats that the party wins, combined with the candidates' positions on the party's list, will then determine whether a particular candidate will get a seat.

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Closed list in the context of Party-list proportional representation

Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a system of proportional representation based on preregistered political parties, with each party being allocated a certain number of seats roughly proportional to their share of the vote.

In these systems, parties provide lists of candidates to be elected, or candidates may declare their affiliation with a political party (in some open-list systems). Seats are distributed by election authorities to each party, in proportion to the number of votes the party receives. Voters may cast votes for parties, as in Spain, Turkey, and Israel (closed lists); or for candidates whose vote totals are pooled together to determine the share of representation of their respective parties, as in Finland, Brazil, and the Netherlands (mixed single vote or panachage).

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Closed list in the context of Congress of the Deputies

The Congress of Deputies (Spanish: Congreso de los Diputados) is the lower house of the Cortes Generales, Spain's legislative branch, the upper house being the Senate. The Congress meets in the Palace of the Parliament (Palacio de las Cortes) in Madrid.

Congress has 350 members elected from fifty-two constituencies (the fifty provinces and two autonomous cities) using closed list D'Hondt proportional representation. Deputies serve four-year terms. The presiding officer and speaker is the President of the Congress of Deputies, who is elected by the members at the first sitting of Congress after an election.

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Closed list in the context of Electoral list

An electoral list is a grouping of candidates for election, usually found in proportional or mixed electoral systems, but also in some plurality electoral systems. An electoral list can be registered by a political party (a party list) or can constitute a group of independent candidates (an electoral citizens' list, or civic list). Lists can be open, in which case electors have some influence over the ranking of the winning candidates, or closed, in which case the order of candidates is fixed at the registration of the list.

Electoral lists are required for party-list proportional representation systems.

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Closed list in the context of Additional-member system

The additional-member system (AMS) is a two-vote seat-linkage-based mixed electoral system used for elections to the Scottish Parliament in the United Kingdom, although not for Westminster elections, in which most representatives are elected in single-member districts (SMDs), and a fixed number of other "additional members" are elected from a closed list to make the seat distribution in the chamber more proportional to the votes cast for party lists. It is a form of mixed-member proportional representation and is distinct from using parallel voting for the list seats (also known as the supplementary-member system) in that the "additional member" seats are awarded to parties taking into account seats won in SMDs (referred to as compensation or top-up) – these are ignored under parallel voting, which is a non-compensatory method.

AMS is the name given to a particular system used in the United Kingdom that aims to provide proportional representation. However, in theory it can fail to be proportional. This is commonly caused by dis-proportional district results caused by seat overhang. The proportionality of AMS depends on having enough additional ("top-up") seats and on how votes are cast in a specific election. During its use in the United Kingdom, AMS produced results closer to mixed-member proportional rather than mixed-member majoritarian representation.

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Closed list in the context of Open list

Open list describes any variant of party-list proportional representation where voters have at least some influence on the order in which a party's candidates are elected. This is as opposed to closed list, in which party lists are in a predetermined, fixed order by the time of the election and gives the general voter no influence at all on the position of the candidates placed on the party list.

An open list system allows voters to select individuals rather than, or in addition to parties. Different systems give the voter different amounts of influence to change the default ranking. The voter's candidate choices are usually called preference vote; the voters are usually allowed one or more preference votes for the open list candidates.

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Closed list in the context of National Assembly (Namibia)

The National Assembly is the lower chamber of Namibia's bicameral Parliament. Its laws must be approved by the National Council, the upper house. Since 2014, it has a total of 104 members. 96 members are directly elected through a system of closed list proportional representation and serve five-year terms. Eight additional members are appointed by the President. Since March 2025, SWAPO member Saara Kuugongelwa has been the Speaker of the National Assembly.

Namibia's National Assembly emerged on Independence Day on 21 March 1990 from the Constituent Assembly of Namibia, following the elections of November 1989. That election, under guidelines established by the United Nations, included foreign observers in an effort to ensure a free and fair election process. The current National Assembly was formed following elections on 27 November 2024.

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