Election officials empty a ballot box of the 2007 parliamentary elections.

Small parties would generally benefit, but a three per cent threshold could spell danger for the Swedish People’s Party.

Finland’s minor political parties will have reason to celebrate come 2015. Current figures suggest they will pick up parliamentary seats thanks to planned electoral reforms.

Under a model of reform partly approved by the government on 4 March, parliamentary seats would be distributed by crunching the total number of nationwide votes with the current d’Hondt method. Constituency-specific results would be calculated under a new format. The reform would benefit middle-sized and minor parties at the expense of the major players.

Following a government session, Minister of Justice Tuija Brax (Greens) expressed confidence that the reform would be pursued to completion. She pointed out that both the Centre Party and the National Coalition – two of Finland’s three largest parties – have supported and committed to the reform during the entire process.

Apart from the Social Democrats (SDP), all party leaders declared their support for the reform as recently as this week, Brax said. “Rarely do proposals attract such widespread support.”

But there has been some scepticism that the reform will ever make it onto the statute books: it does the major parties no favours, and a planned three-per-cent threshold would place the Swedish People’s Party perilously close to electoral oblivion. The largest opposition group, the SDP, has never supported the proposal, instead insisting that adjustments to constituency boundaries would be sufficient.

In order to make it into law, the reform needs a simple majority in this parliament and a two-thirds majority in the following one.

The current system is plagued by large fluctuations in so-called hidden electoral thresholds from one constituency to the next. In order to succeed, small parties have been forced to attach themselves to variegated electoral coalitions.

Now these coalitions will be banned, but constituency associations established in different constituencies could be combined in a common list. Parties would need to gather three per cent of the vote to make it into parliament. Under the current voter turnout rate of around 70 per cent, this equates to some 85,000 votes.

The reform would see the current constituency borders preserved, and voters would still elect representatives for their own constituency.

For the purposes of calculating the results of the election, the constituencies would combine to make one nationwide constituency. The votes attracted by each party in all constituencies would be combined, and the party’s number of seats in parliament allocated on the basis of its support nationwide.

PEKKA POHJOLAINEN – STT
MATTHEW PARRY – HT
Lehtikuva - Martti Björkman