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12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 31 MARCH 2019 NEWS How to get more women in the House, explained What is this new mechanism? This is a method to ensure that parliament gets a more balanced share of women and men. The mechanism will kick in if parliamentary representation of any of the two genders falls below 40%. As things have stood for the past seven decades, this will apply to women but it does not exclude being applied to men if the balance shifts the other way. How will it work? The mechanism will only kick in after the normal electoral process, including the casual elections for vacated seats, is over. At that stage, the Electoral Commission will determine which gender has representation below 40%. The mechanism will add extra seats to achieve better balance. How many seats will be added? The proposal is to limit this to a maximum of 12 extra seats that will go to the under- represented gender. In the 2017 election, all the 12 seats would have to be filled to achieve better balance between men and women. Will this mechanism apply if there are three political parties in parliament? No. It only applies if two political parties are represented in the House. This is similar to the existing proportionality mechanism that applies only if two parties are elected to parliament. In 2017, the Democratic Party elected two MPs. Does this mean the mechanism would not apply to that election? Although the PD elected two MPs, its candidates contested on the same list as the Nationalist Party. This means that for electoral purposes, only candidates from two political parties are currently represented in Parliament. So, yes, the gender mechanism would still apply to the 2017 election result. What is being proposed to increase the number of women? A gender corrective mechanism will kick in after the casual elections are over to increase the number of MPs from the under-represented gender. Does this mean that a party's parliamentary majority could be reduced because of the extra seats? No. The number of extra seats will be apportioned equally between the two political parties. This means that in the 2017 election, the PL and PN would each get six more seats to their current tally. The difference between the government and Opposition will remain a seven-seat majority. How will these extra seats be filled up? The proposal suggests three stages that would occur one after the other, depending on how many extra seats are left to be filled. At the first stage, which is the simplest, the unelected women candidates left hanging at the end of the vote counting process will be elected. This is similar to the process that awards the parties extra seats to achieve proportionality. What happens if not enough women are left hanging to fill the extra seats? Next, the Electoral Commission will look at the unelected male candidates left standing at the last count and organise a casual election using their votes. Only women candidates from the same party on the same district of the male candidate will be able to contest the casual election. The votes of the unelected male candidate are opened and distributed according to the preference indicated by the voter. After all casual elections are held, the Electoral Commission ranks the women according to the votes obtained and declares those with the highest number elect. What if these casual elections still do not yield enough women MPs? The proposal suggests a third step. The votes of MPs elected to the House through the normal casual elections will be used to organise another casual election on the respective districts. Again, only unelected women candidates would be able to contest. And if all three steps are not enough to fill in the extra seats, will these remain vacant? No. The proposal suggests co-option as a measure of last resort. Co-option is already contemplated in our electoral process in certain instances. PN leader Adrian Delia was elected to parliament through co-option, as was Joseph Muscat in 2008 when he became Labour leader. Does this mean that a woman who obtained just 50 votes in the first count could end up being an MP? Yes. But this is a reality of our electoral system, irrespective of the gender mechanism. It is not abnormal to have a candidate who obtains a few votes on the first count but still ends up in parliament after inheriting votes in subsequent counts. It is also not abnormal to have a high-scoring candidate on the first count, who fails to get elected because he does not inherit enough votes. The gender corrective mechanism KURT SANSONE ONLY nine women MPs were elected on their own steam or through a casual election in 2017: the situation has not changed much in 70 years but a pro- posed legal reform could see an addi- tional 12 women take up a parliamen- tary seat. It insists the mechanism is a "cor- rective exercise" that adds seats in parliament to enable a better balance between men and women, rather than reserve a specific number of seats. The popular vote will still be reflect- ed as it is today with the mechanism only adding on to the final result. Whether what is being proposed could be labelled a quota is a moot point but the current electoral sys- tem already incorporates a corrective mechanism to ensure strict propor- tionality between seats and first count votes. The proposal builds on this aspect without getting into the merits of re- forming the electoral system. Knowing how the electoral system works is cru- cial to understand the mechanism. How many MPs do we elect? The electoral process is geared to elect five MPs from each of the 13 dis- tricts, for a total of 65. But once the election result is out and all 65 MPs are known, other measures kick in that could increase the number of elected MPs. What happens after the election result is out? If only two political parties are elected in Parliament, the Electoral Commission works out a mathemati- cal formula to determine whether the parties need to be awarded extra seats to ensure stricter propor- tionality between votes obtained at first count and seats in the House. Were any extra seats awarded in the 2017 election? Yes. In the 2017 election the PL won 37 seats and the PN 28. To achieve pro- portionality, the PN was awarded two extra seats. These went to the two highest polling candidates left hanging at the last count. Carm Mifsud Bonnici on the fourth district and Frederick Azzopardi on the thir- teenth district were elected in this way. What happens next? Candidates that were elected from two districts decide which seat to give up and casual elections are held to elect other MPs from the same party in their stead. In the 2017 election, five PN and seven PL MPs were elected in this way. At the end of the electoral process, how many women MPs were elected in 2017? Nine women candidates made it to Parliament. The PL elected four wom- en and the PN five. High chance of being elected to the House: under the quotas proposal, candidates like Graziella Attard Previ and Dounia Borg (PN), Nikita Zammit Alamango and Deborah Schembri (PL), Paula Mifsud Bonnici (PN), Rachel Tua, Fleur Vella, and Rita Sammut (PL) and Maria Portelli (PN), would be next in line to take up a seat in the House of Representatives