Expanded Participation Model: Alternative for Somalia’s 2020 One-Person One-Vote Plan - Heritage Institute for Policy Studies - Policy Brief 05/2020

In June 2018, the political leaders of the country (the FGS, the presidents of five of the federal member states and the late governor of Mogadishu) met in Baidoa and announced that they had agreed on an electoral model – making the country one giant electoral district using CL-PR.7 Unfortunately, the agreement collapsed before the ink had dried. [...] More importantly, the parliamentary committee report underlined that a one-person, one-vote election was not possible during this electoral cycle, citing a litany of outstanding issues, such as the review of the provisional constitution, amending the citizenship law, the completion of the national census and the demarcation of the boundaries of the FMS and districts.15 This was a major blow to the. [...] • Finally, in terms of district magnitude, since the electoral law adopted the first-past-the- post model, each member of the lower house will be elected separately24, and only the member of the clan for which the seat has been allocated in the past could compete for it. [...] If the NIEC cannot present the plan for holding the election on time, the two chambers of the parliament will decide on what to do in a joint session.30 4 Heritage Institute for Policy Studies Key Deficiencies in the Law The signing of the electoral law is indeed a tangible achievement in Somalia’s quest to fully democratize and shed its archaic electoral system. [...] The EPM envisages that the more people who vote, the stronger the integrity of the election and the less money changing hands.