In the absence of vote pooling: Nomination and vote allocation errors in Colombia

Abstract

Electoral systems vary in the degree to which candidates and parties may pool their votes to maximize seats won. The Japanese single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system allows no vote pooling. Hence parties may commit errors in nomination and vote allocation. List proportional representation (PR) also may limit the amount of vote pooling among lists. If a party is internally fragmented, as in Colombia, list PR may even resemble SNTV. Thus we can compare Colombian error rates to Japanese. The Colombian Liberal Party is less error-prone than the country-specific literature implies; however, the Colombian case suggests that an absence of vote pooling can be costly to parties even under PR systems.