News flash!

Via Milkmoney or Not

Ecuadorian elections

As usual with Latin American elections, the talk has all been about the presidential election in Ecuador, where leftist Rafael Correa defeated banana magnate Alvaro Noboa. Correa was originally aligned with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela but has moderated a little bit since, at least according to the Economist, who I trust more than I do in a matter to which I haven't paid a horribly large amount of attention.

There has been less discussion of the legislative elections. (The Wikipedia article doesn't really mention them yet). However, Ecuador uses a rather unusual voting system. For a discussion of how the system works, check out my comment at Fruits and Votes (the original post regarding both Correa's win and the legislative polls). Essentially, it is a strange open-list system. As far as I can tell, it's also possible to cheat. Individual votes on the open lists are weighted by the average number of votes everyone casts for candidates. In big constituencies (there are a couple, with 14 and 18 seats), pretty much nobody casts all those votes. In Guayas (18 seats) the average was about 8 votes. This means that if you voted for every individual that your party nominated, your 18 votes * 1/8 = 2.25 votes for your party, effectively. As far as I can tell, that's perfectly legal and possible.

Full results can be found at the Ecuadorian TSE.