Fatah calls for proportional voting in Palestine

by Jack Santucci // Published June 22, 2007
I've been waiting for this.

Bethlehem - Ma'an - The Palestine Liberation Organisation central council closed its meetings on Thursday evening, calling for amendments to the election laws. In particular, the council called for the establishment of a proportional electoral system rather than a district-based system.

Palestine's winner-take-all, at-large election system misfired in January 2006, creating a Hamas-dominated government.

Ryan Griffin, then a research fellow here, and I co-wrote an analysis of that election, which a DailyKos reader picked up last Friday as political violence again made news in Palestine.

Fatah was over-nominating in the multi-member districts used at the nominal tier. A preferential system like choice voting could preserve the candidate orientation of the electoral system while dealing with spoiler effects like these. For now, though, it seems like list PR is the order of the day.

My future colleagues at the Democratic Piece have been following developments in the area. Fruits and Votes has a great piece on the initial election, and New America's Steven Hill ran a widely syndicated op-ed on the result in February 2006.

A big thanks to Program for Representative Government intern Meghan Jones for her close watching of Google alerts.