Centre Party rejects proposal to triple equalisation seats

The Centre Party does not support a proposal to increase the number of equalisation seats in Iceland’s electoral system from nine to 27, its parliamentary group leader, Sigríður Á. Andersen, told mbl.is.

A working group appointed by the minister of justice to review the electoral system proposed increasing the number of equalisation seats to give votes more equal weight, without increasing the total number of members of parliament.

The group also proposed basing the number of seats assigned to each constituency on the number of voters there. That change would give the Southwest constituency four additional seats at the expense of the Northwest and Northeast constituencies.

Andersen said there needed to be agreement on what problem the changes were intended to solve. She said people were at least not united in believing that the problem was that rural areas had a voice or a particular level of influence in parliament.

“You cannot quite think of the electoral system as an Excel spreadsheet or a mathematical problem,” Andersen said, arguing that the country has constituencies that must be taken into account.

She said the proposed changes appeared to overlook the constitution. Although the government had the parliamentary majority needed to force the proposal through, she said the justice minister was right to consider such changes unwise without broad agreement in parliament.

Andersen said the Centre Party would not support the proposal and questioned whether the current situation was serious enough to justify changing the system at all.