Final agreement over uninominal voting: fake electoral threshold of 5 percent

For a party to enter the Romanian Parliament it needs to reach a 5% electoral threshold or have six candidates on the first position in electoral colleges for the House of Deputies and three in the colleges for the Senate, according to a request on changes to the future legislation due to introduce uninominal voting in Romanian elections. The request, pushed by the governing Liberals (PNL) and Hungarian Democrats (UDMR), comes a week before the bill is to be debated in the House of Deputies.

Negotiations on the introduction of a uninominal voting system have been taking place for months.

The commission discussing the electoral code reported only one vote against the PNL-UDMR proposal. UDMR, which analysts say is facing trouble with maintaining their traditional 6-7% share of the votes, has also pressed for lowering the electoral threshold from 5 to 3%, but the idea was rejected by other parites.

A compromise formula leaves the possibility for a party to enter Parliament without reaching the necessary thresshold if that party manages to have six candidates on top of the lists in House colleges and three top candidates in Senate colleges.