Matemáticas electorales: Buscando la proporcionalidad

• Main Authors: Palencia González, Javier, Seijas Macías, J. Antonio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: ASEPUMA. Asociación Española de Profesores Universitarios de Matemáticas aplicadas a la Economía y a la Empresa 2016-12-01
• Series: Rect@
• Subjects: vote; inequality; disproportionality; electoral district; electoral system
• Online Access: http://urls.my/NCZcpN

The parliamentary systems of representation are the most extended method of government in the greater part of the countries. These systems are based in the proportionality principle: “One man, one vote”, such as they are organized using systems where a group of people reflects, the most proportional as possible, the feel of the inhabitants, expressed through electoral processes. Even so, these systems present diverse distortions that break the rules of equity. The two more commons are disproportionality and malapportionment, widely studied in the literature. As all the countries and systems, Spain is not different to these problems and, long time ago, diverse voices have heaved to report the fault of proportionality of the Spanish electoral system. Our work is focused at this point; we are looking for answering to these questions: Is the Spanish electoral system proportional? And if the answer is negative, is it possible to reform the system so that it was more proportional? We will see that the system is not proportional and that, with small reforms of the electoral law without need of constitutional modifications, it is possible to correct the distortions. In this paper, we will propose an electoral system using a two-stage process and a modification of the law of distribution of seats that reduces almost to zero the disproportionality degree of the Spanish electoral system.