The Institute of Public Policy – Lisbon (IPP) and the Associação de Deputados à Assembleia da República (AEDAR) will host, on 1 June at 5:30 pm, the seminar “Reforming the Electoral System: Redesigning Constituencies and Changing the Ballot Paper?”. The event will take place at the Casa do Parlamento – Centro Interpretativo, located at Rua de S. Bento, no. 148, in Lisbon.
The report “Reforming the Electoral System: Redesigning Constituencies and Changing the Ballot Paper?” will be presented and discussed. The study analyses the functioning of the current electoral system, focusing on the relationship between the configuration and magnitude of electoral constituencies, the process through which votes are converted into parliamentary seats, and the structure of the ballot paper.
Different possibilities for electoral reform are explored, including proposals aimed at redesigning electoral constituencies, considering mechanisms to compensate for votes not converted into seats, and reflecting on models that strengthen the personalisation of voting and the proximity between voters and elected representatives.
The session will feature interventions by Paulo Trigo Pereira, Professor at ISEG and President of the Board of IPP; Margarida Marques, President of the Board of AEDAR; António Capucho, former Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Marina Costa Lobo, principal researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-ULisboa) followed by a debate session.
This seminar is particularly relevant at a time when the debate surrounding the reform of the Portuguese electoral system has been gaining increasing prominence in the public sphere. In this context, special note should be made of the manifesto presented in July 2024, which helped drive the discussion around a fairer and more representative electoral model and initiated a nationwide consultation process.
The programme will be available shortly.
Admission is free, subject to prior registration here.