Civil Committee calling for PLC elections before DecemberBy Amin Abu Wardeh
Published June 14th 2005 in Palestine News Network
The Civil Committee for Elections Monitoring called on President Abbas to issue a new presidential directive which would put the PLC elections not later than 29 November of this year. The committee issued a statement to the media, blaming the PLC and expressing its disapproval after President Abbas announced the PLC elections would be delayed from July to an unspecified date.
The committee’s statement also called on the PLC to adopt the full Proportional Representation (PR) system. This would then consider the Palestinian territories as one unit, with a minimum of two percent for the representation. Or they called for adopting PR considering the Palestinian territories as five areas— North West Band, Central WB, South WB, North Gaza and South Gaza. This would then have a minimum representation of four percent. The leaflet also mentioned that the two systems could be harmonized in one (voting half of the chairs as PR in the department with a minimum of three percent and the second half to be voted on the basis of PR in the five departments with a minimum of five percent).
The leaflet also asked to reserve the women participation with a minimum percentage of 20 % of the total PLC members, to approve the law before the end of this month of June, and to modify the needed articles in the Basic Law.
The committee’s statement also called on the PLC to adopt the full Proportional Representation (PR) system. This would then consider the Palestinian territories as one unit, with a minimum of two percent for the representation. Or they called for adopting PR considering the Palestinian territories as five areas— North West Band, Central WB, South WB, North Gaza and South Gaza. This would then have a minimum representation of four percent. The leaflet also mentioned that the two systems could be harmonized in one (voting half of the chairs as PR in the department with a minimum of three percent and the second half to be voted on the basis of PR in the five departments with a minimum of five percent).
The leaflet also asked to reserve the women participation with a minimum percentage of 20 % of the total PLC members, to approve the law before the end of this month of June, and to modify the needed articles in the Basic Law.
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.