Electoral system for national legislature

Regulation No. 2001/33 on Elections for the Assembly of Kosovo

Section 4
Allocation of Seats

4.2 The seats in the Assembly shall be distributed according to the system of representation established by paragraph 9.1.3 of the Constitutional Framework, that is, by allocating:

1. One hundred (100) seats amongst all certified political entities in proportion to the number of valid votes received by them; and
2. The twenty (20) seats reserved for the additional representation of Communities, in the manner specified in the Constitutional Framework.

4.3 The allocation of seats to political entities shall be carried out in the following manner:

1. The total number of valid votes received by each political entity competing for a set of seats, as defined by paragraph 9.1.3(a)-(b) of the Constitutional Framework, shall be divided by 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, et seq. until the number of divisors used corresponds with the total number of seats to be distributed in that set of seats;
    
2. The quotients resulting from this series of divisions shall be arranged in order, greatest to least. Seats shall be allocated to political entities according to the quotients; the first seat goes to the entity with the largest quotient, the second seat goes to the entity with the next largest quotient, et seq. until all seats in that set have been allocated;
    
3. Seats shall be first allocated to the set of one hundred seats specified in paragraph 9.1.3(a) of the Constitutional Framework and thereafter to the sets of seats reserved for the additional representation of non-Kosovo Albanian Communities specified in paragraph 9.1.3(b) of the Constitutional Framework in the following order: the Kosovo Serb Community ten (10) seats; the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian Communities four (4) seats; the Bosniak Community three (3) seats; the Turkish Community two (2) seats; and the Gorani Community one (1) seat;
    
4. Any quotient which gains a political entity a seat in any given set of seats shall be disregarded in any subsequent seat distribution;
    
5. If a political entity is allocated seats equal to the number of candidates on its list and there are still seats to be allocated, then the remaining quotients of that entity shall not be taken into account in allocating any remaining seats; and
    
6. Any seats allocated to a political entity in any set shall be summed in order to provide the total number of seats that the political entity has won. That sum shall be the total number of seats allocated to that political entity for the purposes of the election for distribution to its candidates.

The 2001 parliamentary elections were the first national elections conducted with the closed-list proportional electoral system, following the Kosovo War. Following the Serbian military’s surrender to NATO in 1999, the United Nations adopted a Constitutional Framework for Provisional Institutions of Self Government to create an electoral system based on proportional representation and ethnic minority malapportionment.

To maximize minority representation, the UN and OSCE devised the proportional representation system with no electoral threshold and with parties contesting in a single district, which increased electoral magnitude. Seats are allocated with the Saint-Lague formula, which increases the number of seats for minority parties. Furthermore, 20 out of 120 seats in Parliament are reserved for minority groups.

Since the system’s inauguration, there has been much debate which revolves around the overrepresentation of national minorities, and the lack of accountability of assembly members to their constituents.