The voting system is one of three interlinking processes that affect the formation of the government in Iraq’s parliamentary system; the others are seat allocation as part of the proportional representation system and the coalition formation process. Before an election, political parties and independent candidates register with the Independent High Electoral Commission, through which they are vetted and cleared to contest in the election. After the vote, parliamentary seats are allocated to the political parties with the most votes. If no single party wins more than 50 per cent of the parliamentary seats, parties then engage in a process to form a coalition. There is an electoral assumption that the party that has won the greatest number of seats will lead this process, at least in the initial phase. However, this has not been the case since 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled that the parties that could assemble the largest coalition would have the right to form the government – regardless of which single entity won the most seats. This ruling effectively allowed government formation discussions to take place as a separate exercise from the vote. As a result, the challenge of forming a government no longer depended on who had won the greatest number of seats, but rather who could form alliances based on the distribution of ‘political goods’, i.e. high-level positions and the control of ministries. Subsequently, government formation has focused less on the creation of coalitions, and increasingly on the division of ministerial and executive-level posts between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parliamentary blocs.
Successive electoral law reforms have made changes to the voting and seat allocation systems, but have not addressed the government formation process, which has become increasingly fragmented.
The 2005 election
The first parliamentary election in December 2005 retained the ‘closed list’ proportional representation system that was adopted for the earlier transitional elections in January of that year. In order to ensure sufficient Sunni representation, and to contain representation of Kurds within their region, the 2005 law divided 230 of the 275 seats in the Council of Representatives among the 18 provinces based on population. The remaining 45 ‘compensatory’ seats were distributed to parties that had received significant numbers of votes across the 18 provinces but did not win a seat within a district, with any remaining seats after that distributed to the main winning parties. Voters cast one vote for a party list and seats were distributed to parties based on the number of votes received.
The voting system adopted a modified Hare quota, in which two calculations were used to distribute seats among party lists. First, to obtain the ‘election quota’, the number of valid votes in an electoral district was divided by the number of seats allocated to that district. Second, the number of votes obtained by each party in that district would then be divided by the ‘election quota’ to establish the number of seats to be allocated to the parties. Remaining seats in the district would be distributed to parties with the greatest number of surplus votes (votes received in excess of the number required to secure a seat) – referred to as the ‘highest remainder’ calculation. As mentioned above, 45 compensatory seats were awarded across all districts in two ways: to parties that had received the most votes above the ‘national average’ (the total number of valid votes cast nationally divided by the total number of seats) or to parties that had won the highest number of seats in districts.
The election law did not specify how parties should allocate the seats they won to the candidates on their lists. This gave parties complete control over which candidates were awarded seats. As a result, following the elections, parties allocated seats based on their internal political preferences, often disproportionately rewarding candidates ranked lower on their list or from districts where the party had minimal support.
The use of the Hare quota tends to distribute seats to a larger number of parties and favours smaller ones. In the December 2005 elections, use of the Hare quota, alongside the compensatory seat system, resulted in 17 parties winning seats. However, the decision to distribute compensatory seats to parties that had won the highest number of seats in districts – as well as to those receiving votes above the national average – further excluded many smaller parties because the number of votes required to win a district seat (referred to as the ‘cost’ of a seat) was higher than the ‘national average’. With the number of national votes at 12,191,133, the ‘cost’ of a national compensatory seat was 44,331 votes. In contrast, the ‘cost’ of a seat in the district of Baghdad was 44,777 votes and that of a seat in Anbar was 64,407 votes. This hurt smaller parties disproportionately, with only one that had not won a district seat gaining a compensatory one.
The method used by parties to select representatives sparked calls for reform from the public, who demanded greater choice through the direct election of candidates.
Voter turnout in December 2005 was relatively high with 79.63 per cent of voters casting ballots. The Shia United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) – mainly comprised of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Islamic Dawa Party and the Sadrists – won the most seats (128). After the elections, the UIA was invited by the president to enter negotiations to build a governing coalition with at least 138 seats. The result was a government of national unity comprised of the UIA, the Kurdistani Alliance (or Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan) with 53 seats, the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front (or Tawafuq) with 44 seats, and the secular Al-Iraqiya led by Ayad Allawi with 25 seats. Nouri al-Maliki (UIA) was named prime minister. The government formation process largely reflected the popular vote, with the four most popular parties entering government. However, the method used by parties to select representatives sparked calls for reform from the public, who demanded greater choice through the direct election of candidates.
The 2010 election
Iraq’s election laws were revised prior to the 2010 parliamentary election. The changes adopted were partially in line with revisions to provincial election laws relating to the voting system and reserved minority seats. This introduced the use of ‘open lists’ allowing the public to vote either for their preferred party or for an individual candidate within a party. This made ‘personal votes’ possible as voters could identify candidates they wanted to elect, regardless of how parties ranked them on their lists. This type of voting system minimizes vote ‘wastage’ because, where successful candidates amass more votes than are required for a seat, these ‘surplus’ votes are retained by the party in a given district. This potentially enables the election of other candidates who did not receive enough individual votes, if the party’s vote numbers surpass the electoral threshold.
Activists and demonstrators supported the change in the system. The Sadrists and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani backed public calls for greater political transparency, including the use of open lists. It proved impossible for the large parties and coalition groups to oppose the change publicly, even though they were reportedly against it in private. The open list system was ultimately accepted by the factions, among them the UIA, headed by Prime Minister Maliki, and the Kurds. Despite their reservations, the factions were confident that open lists and the increased focus on candidates as political personalities with individual mandates, would be favourable to them. Subsequent parliamentary elections recorded high numbers of votes for individual candidates. In the 2010 elections, the focus on votes for individuals was exploited to great effect by the Sadrists within the National Iraqi Alliance (NIA). Later, in the 2014 elections, 44 representatives were elected by voters who identified with specific candidates and disregarded their ranking in the party list.
The change in the electoral system also included the introduction of eight minority seats reserved for Christians, Yazidis, Sabaeans and Shabeks. The Kurds initially resisted this, seeing minority groups such as the Yazidis and Shabeks as Kurdish and not entitled to separate representation. However, the Kurds supported reserved seats for Christians – as did the Sadrists, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and secular Sunni groups such as Al-Iraqiya, tangentially providing support for reserved seats for all identified minorities. Ultimately, the Kurds backed the provisions and their support was essential for the adoption of this change.
For the 2010 elections, the number of parliamentary seats was increased to 325 (with 310 district seats), ostensibly to reflect an increase in the population but without the benefit of a census. The increased number of seats was the subject of considerable trading and negotiations between factions. The allocation of seats per district in the 2009 election law was based on the earlier 2005 voter estimates for provinces, which favoured Kurdish factions. However, in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the 2005 calculation was unconstitutional and should instead be based on national population figures, with one seat per 100,000 residents. It was this latter calculation that formed the basis of the revised number of representatives.
Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi, leader of the then largest Sunni bloc, the Iraqi Accord Front, opposed using the 2005 figures. He vetoed the draft law, preferring a calculation that would favour the Sunni majority in Ninewa district. A coalition of Shia factions consisting of Maliki’s State of Law, the ISCI, and the NIA also opposed the amendment of the seat numbers. However, a compromise deal was struck through the agreement to grant Kurdistan two compensatory seats regardless of the legal provisions; this was in addition to the minority representative seats Kurdistan had already been allocated as well as the existing seats held in majority Shia areas. The number of compensatory seats was reduced to seven, to be distributed to parties that won the highest number of district seats, and there would be eight reserved minority seats. The Hare quota was retained with candidates ranked on the votes they personally received. Remaining compensatory seats were now exclusively reserved for parties that had already won seats, and were ‘distributed to winning lists based on the proportion of the votes they acquired’. This shift, along with the exclusive allocation of ‘remainder’ seats to party’s that had already won a seat, heavily favoured larger parties. In the 2010 elections, only nine parties received seats. That year, voter turnout fell to 60.98 per cent.
In both the 2009 provincial elections and the 2010 parliamentary elections, voters focused consistently on nationalism and service delivery, despite the political community’s emphasis on sectarian divisions following the extreme violence of 2007 and 2008. This trend in voter priorities was reflected in the success in the parliamentary elections of Al-Iraqiya, a secular non-sectarian Sunni–Shia coalition, which was the largest winner with 91 seats. Maliki’s State of Law coalition came second with 89 seats, followed by the NIA with 70 seats and the Kurdistan Alliance with 43 seats.
