Signature collection has opened on the public initiative portal Manabalss.lv for a change to Saeima elections that would let voters transfer their choice between candidate lists. If the list a voter selects does not clear the 5% threshold, the vote would pass to the next choice they indicated.
The initiative’s author, Vladimirs Komarovs, proposes that voters mark several candidate lists on the ballot and rank them in order of priority. If the first choice failed the 5% barrier, the vote would move to the second choice. If that list also failed, it would move to the third.
If none of the lists a voter named cleared 5%, the vote would not be counted in the allocation of seats. Whether a list had passed the barrier would still be decided from voters’ first choices. Transfers would stay inside the relevant electoral district, and the existing proportional system for distributing mandates would remain.
The application notes that the current Saeima election law keeps lists that receive less than 5% of the vote across Latvia out of the distribution of deputies’ seats. Komarovs argues that votes cast for lists that miss the barrier therefore gain no representation in the Saeima, while lists that clear it can receive a larger share of seats than their share of all votes cast.
Putting the proposal into effect would require broader amendments to the Saeima election law, changing how ballots are filled in, how votes are counted and how results are calculated. In the author’s view, the mechanism would raise the chance that a vote still counts in the seat allocation when a first choice misses 5%, and could strengthen public trust because voters would have more scope to shape the result according to the order they set.