By Michael Gallagher

The plethora of candidates for the European Parliament elections due in Ireland on 7 June raises the question of whether the country is using the most appropriate method of electing its MEPs. With 23 candidates in Dublin and South, and 27 in Midlands–North-West, voters will be faced with a disconcertingly lengthy ballot paper and may need a while to find their favoured candidate, let alone to allocate their lower preferences. With transfers likely to determine the destination of many of the 14 seats, a blockbuster ballot paper does not help anyone.

The total of 73 candidates is well up on the previous record (59 in 2019). Noticeably, the number of female candidates is unchanged from 2019 at 24, but the number of male candidates has risen by 40 per cent, from 35 to 49, partly as a result of the arrival of a number of independents or small parties whose main focus is on immigration, an issue that tends to resonate more with male than female voters. The requirements for candidacy at Euro-elections are very permissive – only 60 signatures are needed to get onto the ballot paper in a constituency whose electorate is over a million – and indeed the courts might deem unconstitutional any more restrictive set of conditions. That being so, a further increase to 90 or 100 candidates at the 2029 elections is perfectly feasible.

Much is made in election commentary on the supposedly ‘huge’ or ‘sprawling’ nature of Ireland’s three constituencies. What is not always appreciated is that Ireland’s Euro-constituencies are exceptionally SMALL by European standards, both geographically and especially when it comes to district magnitude (the number of seats per constituency).

Of the 27 member states, 23 of them elect their MEPs from one large nationwide constituency. Only four use sub-national constituencies, and in two of these district magnitude is much larger than in Ireland. The four exceptions are Belgium (22 MEPs elected from 3 constituencies), Ireland (14 MEPs elected from 3 constituencies), Italy (76 MEPs elected from 5 constituencies) and Poland (53 MEPs elected from 13 constituencies). Ireland and Poland, then, stand out for their use of small-district-magnitude constituencies.

It’s well known that in small district magnitude constituencies, disproportionality (lack of correspondence between votes and seats) is likely. At Dáil elections, with around 40 constituencies, the various over- and under-representations produced within individual constituencies will probably to some extent balance out – though there is still a strong case for raising average district magnitude from its exceptionally low level of just 4 (see https://politicalreform.ie/2023/09/01/constituencies-review-2023-the-bigger-picture/). But at EP elections, with only 3 constituencies, this is less likely to happen, and anomalies are a regular occurrence. In 2019, for example, in proportion to their votes Fine Gael should have won 4 seats rather than 5, and Sinn Féin should have won 2 rather than 1. In 2009 Labour won 3 seats and lost them all in 2014, whereas a proportional outcome would have given it 2 in 2009 and 1 in 2014. Many other examples could be given. EP elections in Ireland regularly deliver levels of disproportionality much higher than what we see at general elections, and it’s not inconceivable that the EU might deem Ireland’s current approach unacceptable as it fails to meet the criterion of delivering proportional outcomes.

There is a lot to be said for treating the whole state as a single constituency, but clearly if that were to be done, PR-STV would no longer be the most suitable way of filling the seats, as voters would be faced with an absurdly long ballot paper. The obvious alternative is a list system, which is used in 25 member states to elect MEPs. (Apart from Ireland, the only other exception is Malta, which also uses PR-STV to elect its 6 MEPs. The ballot paper is less complicated than in Ireland, though, partly because only the two main parties are in serious contention for seats, and partly because candidates are arranged on the ballot paper by party, and most voters confine themselves to ‘their’ party when ranking candidates.)

Thus, in Ireland, elections would take place within one national constituency. Each registered party (or independent who meets ballot access requirements) would put forward a list of candidates, with at most 14 names (the number of seats being filled) on each list.

List systems are sometimes misunderstood as freezing voters out of any choice among candidates and giving the party organisation the final say over which of its candidates are elected. That’s not the case, though. There are, it’s true, so-called ‘closed list’ systems under which precisely that happens, but only 6 EU member states elect their MEPs this way (France, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Romania and Spain). The other 19 countries employ ‘open list’ systems in which voters can express a preference for an individual candidate on their chosen party’s list and, while the precise rules vary from country to country, in broad terms these preferences determine which candidates take the party’s seats, giving individual candidates and MEPs a strong incentive to be responsive and accountable to the voters. If a party wins enough votes for 2 seats, these seats go to the two candidates who receive the most number of preference votes. In principle, indeed, PR-STV could be used within each list, though that would risk becoming too complicated and isn’t used in any country employing party lists.

PR-STV is firmly established as the electoral system for Dáil elections. It’s in the constitution, so could be changed only by a referendum, and it’s unlikely that the electorate would agree to its abolition given that any change of electoral system would mean a reduction in its power. And despite occasional attempts to blame PR-STV for many of the state’s woes, the evidence for such a critique is pretty weak.

What’s appropriate for Dáil elections might not be the best way of electing MEPs, though. At European Parliament level, there’s a stronger case for adopting a more party-centred electoral system, especially as this can be done without removing all voter input into candidate choice. Moreover, the electoral system for electing MEPs is not specified in the constitution and hence can be changed by ordinary legislation.

There’s a strong case, then, for arguing that the 2024 European Parliament elections should be the last at which Ireland’s MEPs are elected by PR-STV, and that from 2029 onwards a national list should be employed, with no sub-national constituencies and with provision for voters to express preferences for individual candidates on the list of their favoured party.