GD Tables Bill Increasing Threshold for Electing Majoritarian MPs

Georgian Dream ruling coalition has submitted to the Parliament a draft of legislative amendment, which envisages replacing current rule of plurality vote to elect majoritarian MPs in single-mandate constituencies with majority vote.

Georgia’s 150-member Parliament is elected through mixed system, wherein 73 lawmakers are elected in 73 majoritarian, single-mandate constituencies and the remaining 77 seats are allocated by a party-list, proportional vote.

Under the existing rule a majoritarian MP candidate, who receives more votes than others, but not less than 30%, is declared an outright winner of the race.

According to the GD-proposed draft amendment to the election code, threshold required for an outright victory in the first round will increase from 30% to 50%.

A second round runoff should be held if none of the candidate garners more than 50% of votes, according to the proposed bill.

The proposal comes amid a separate bill, which envisages redistricting of 73 single-mandate constituencies, and which has already been approved with two readings by the Parliament. The proposed redistricting aims at creating electoral districts of relatively equal size by number of voters.

GD first announced about intention to propose both of these changes – redistricting and increasing of threshold of electing majoritarian MPs – in June.

Opposition parties and civil society groups have been calling for scrapping majoritarian component of the electoral system for next year’s parliamentary elections, but the ruling GD coalition agrees to do so by post-2016 elections.