Open or closed lists? Spain's electoral lists explained, and what Sweden and Finland do differently

Open or closed lists is one of the oldest arguments in Spanish politics, and it comes back every time trust in parties falls. It came back again this autumn. Among the institutional problems at the launch of Democracia 21 was the demand that MPs return to their constituency and answer to voters, which we discussed in our piece on MPs who go home. Whether that works depends a great deal on how the ballot paper is designed.

Closed, unblocked, open: the three systems

Spanish has a precise vocabulary for this, and English uses it loosely, so it helps to start with words.

A closed, blocked list (lista cerrada y bloqueada) is the one Spaniards know from the Congress of Deputies. The party presents a list, the voter takes it or leaves it, and the seats go to the names at the top. The electoral law, LOREG, says so in article 163: the seats each list wins are awarded to its candidates in the order in which they appear. Article 96 adds that a ballot is void if names have been changed, added or crossed out, or their order altered. Closed means the voter can't add anyone; blocked means the voter can't reorder anyone.

An unblocked list (lista desbloqueada), which English-language literature calls an open list, lets the voter mark a preferred candidate inside the party list they choose. The party still wins seats according to its total vote, and the preference votes decide, wholly or partly, which of its candidates fill them.

A fully open list (lista abierta), sometimes called a free list, lets the voter pick candidates from different parties. Spain already uses something close to this for the Senate. Under LOREG article 166, voters in provincial constituencies can vote for up to three candidates, and the most-voted are elected; a ballot with more than three names marked is void.

What happens when voters can choose

Spain's own Senate is the first piece of evidence, and it is sobering. In its 2009 report on electoral reform, the Consejo de Estado, the government's top advisory body, noted that very few voters build their own list from different parties or change the order, so results in such systems usually differ only slightly from closed lists. In Senate elections, the party that wins the most Congress votes usually also takes its three senators in each province. The report blamed partly the ballot design, which prints candidates under their party's name and so looks like a list to be voted as a block.

The rest of Europe offers more. The same report counted Spain, Portugal and Italy as the only European proportional systems still using closed, blocked lists at the time. It sorted the others into two families. In the rigid model, used in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Slovakia, Norway and the Netherlands, a candidate needs a set share of the party's votes in preferences to jump the list; otherwise the party order holds. In the flexible model, used in Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Greece and others, the voters' preferences decide.

Sweden shows how a threshold works. According to the Riksdag, a candidate lower down a party's list wins a seat ahead of others if they receive personal votes from at least 5% of that party's voters in the constituency. If nobody reaches 5%, the remaining seats follow the list order. Finland goes further. Voters write the number of one candidate on a blank card; each party's total is the sum of its candidates' votes; and within each party, the candidates with the most personal votes win. Dylan Difford, writing for the Electoral Reform Society, points out that this leaves central party leaders with less say over who gets in than in most countries, and links the open list to Finland's high share of women MPs: 47% in the previous parliament.

Exit, voice and the ballot paper

Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty gives the clearest way to think about it. When an organisation declines, members can leave it or speak up to change it, and the easier exit is, the less voice gets used. A Spanish voter unhappy with a party's candidates has only exit: vote for another party or stay home. A preference vote opens a channel for voice inside the party. A voter can stay loyal to the party and still say which of its people should represent them.

John Rawls adds a reason that matters for polarised times. In his account of public reason, candidates and legislators carry a heavier duty than ordinary citizens to justify their positions in terms others can accept. Under closed lists, a candidate's audience is the people who draw up the list. With a preference vote, each candidate also has to explain themselves to voters directly, including voters in the middle.

The Consejo de Estado named the risks honestly. Preference voting brings competition between candidates of the same party, which can be bitter and expensive, and the report warned that unblocked lists carry a risk of corruption and clientelism, as candidates look for personal networks of support. Our explainer on political clientelism sets out why that risk is real.

The radical-centre position

The left brings a concern for equal voice: ordinary voters, as well as party officials, should shape who represents them, and money shouldn't buy a better place on the list. The right and the liberal market tradition bring the case for individual accountability and competition between candidates on their record. The idea that fits neither camp is the design itself, a default with an override. The party's order stands unless enough voters say otherwise, which is the Swedish model.

That is what we would test in Spain, along the lines the Consejo de Estado itself suggested in 2009: unblocked lists with a preference vote, tried first in European or regional elections and extended to Congress if it works. Two conditions would come with it: a spending cap on personal campaigns, with donors published, and a ballot that makes the preference box impossible to miss. The voter keeps the party, and gains a name.