Regarded as one of the most respected and hardworking legislators during the 2020-2024 term of Congress, young lawyer Jose Horacio Rodriguez was beaten by the system and left out. He failed to make the cut under the D’Hondt vote allocation method that leaves little room for minority parties. Jose Horacio Rodriguez ran for the Opción Democrática party. His sister, Virginia Antares Rodriguez was the party’s presidential candidate.
Into the 2024 legislator election, Jose Horacio Rodriguez backed the candidates of the Rescate RD alliance that called for joint candidacies amongst the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) and the Fuerza del Pueblo (FP). Rodriguez said he backed the alliance to avoid what eventually happened that the ruling Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) dominate in the 2024-2028 Congress. But Rodriguez’s backing of the alliance did not deliver votes for him and instead favored his colleague, Omar Fernandez, who was running for senator.
Rodriguez would like to see legislators change the way deputies get to win a seat from the D’Hondt method to the Sainte-Laguë o Webster methods whereby a minority party member would be awarded a seat on grounds of the number of votes he receives, not on the overall votes of the majority party represented.
Rodriguez says people don’t understand the method and now distrust the voting system. He said people say why vote if my candidate received 7,000 more votes, than the one who won the seat.
In summary, the D’Hondt method is the least proportional of the three, favoring larger parties, while the Sainte-Laguë and Webster methods are more proportional and equitable in their allocation of seats.
The D’Hondt method, Sainte-Laguë method, and Webster method are all proportional representation methods used to allocate parliamentary seats among political parties based on their vote shares. The key differences are:
- Proportionality:
• The D’Hondt method slightly favors larger parties over smaller parties, leading to less proportional outcomes compared to the Sainte-Laguë and Webster methods.
• The Sainte-Laguë and Webster methods are more proportional, giving smaller parties a better chance of winning seats. - Calculation:
• D’Hondt divides each party’s vote total by 1, 2, 3, etc. and allocates seats to the highest averages.
• Sainte-Laguë divides by 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. to give smaller parties more favorable divisors.
• Webster uses a similar divisor sequence to Sainte-Laguë but is slightly more proportional. - Seat Bias:
• D’Hondt method tends to over-represent larger parties and under-represent smaller parties.
• Sainte-Laguë and Webster methods are more neutral and reduce the bias towards larger parties.
Rodriguez feels proud of his successes during his term in Congress, including the ban on child marriage, and the corrections to the trust contract for the development of Pedernales. “When you come here to work thinking of the collective good, one can do great things, aware of the limitations, one would like to do more,” he told Listin Diario. He has announced he will work on strengthening Opción Democrática for the next elections in 2028.
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Listin Diario
Listin Diario
24 June 2024