heard that to stop the bogus parties from getting into congress via the party-list system, we should abstain from voting for any party list. Is this correct?"
My answer is that is not correct. By abstaining, the voter is in effect helping lower the hurdle that is needed for these bogus parties to claim a party list seat. This is because the law requires a party list to get at least two (2) percent of the total votes cast for party list to entitle it to one seat.
Republic Act 7941, Party-List System Act provides in Sec. 12. Procedure in Allocating Seats for Party-List Representatives. that The COMELEC shall tally all the votes for the parties, organizations, or coalitions on a nationwide basis, rank them according to the number of votes received and allocate party-list representatives proportionately according to the percentage of votes obtained by each party, organization, or coalition as against the total nationwide votes cast for the party-list system.
In G R No. 179271, BANAT v. COMELEC; GR No. 179295, Bayan Muna v. COMELEC, April 21, 2009, the court outlines that Philippine-style party-list election has four inviolable parameters
In determining the allocation of seats for party-list representatives under Section 11 of R.A. No. 7941, the following procedure shall be observed:
1. The parties, organizations, and coalitions shall be ranked from the highest to the lowest based on the number of votes they garnered during the elections.
2. The parties, organizations, and coalitions receiving at least two percent (2%) of the total votes cast for the party-list system shall be entitled to one guaranteed seat each.
3. Those garnering sufficient number of votes, according to the ranking in paragraph 1, shall be entitled to additional seats in proportion to their total number of votes until all the additional seats are allocated.
4. Each party, organization, or coalition shall be entitled to not more than three (3) seats.
In computing the additional seats, the guaranteed seats shall no longer be included because they have already been allocated, at one seat each, to every two-percenter. Thus, the remaining available seats for allocation as “additional seats” are the maximum seats reserved under the Party List System less the guaranteed seats. Fractional seats are disregarded in the absence of a provision in R.A. No. 7941 allowing for a rounding off of fractional seats.
Assuming there are 50 million voters, a voting rate of 65% and all of the voters voted for a party-list, then 50m x 65% = 32,500,000 votes x 2% = 650,000 votes to be entitled to one seat. However, if out of the 32,500,000 who went to vote, only half voted for a party list then only 16,250,000 votes were cast for the party list system. That means any party who got two percent of that or roughly 325,000 votes already qualify to one seat.
Therefore, to effectively stop the bogus party-lists, what voters should do is to cast a vote for legitimate party-list, so that the denominator will go up. And to spread the votes thru at least 10 or so legitimate parties to prevent the second round from distributing seats even to those not qualified.
In any case, no party can get more than 3 seats so any additional vote for a legitimate party list, like Gabriela or Bayan Muna, will have no effect on their results.
The decision of Justice Carpio above cited is an interesting read on how the party list seats would be allocated. Those who gets 2% are guaranteed 1 seat. In the 2007 election, only 17 parties qualified. So out of 55 seats alloted to party-list system, only 17 parties qualified. There is now excess of 38 seats for the second round. In the second round, the 2% is ignored. The percentage vote of each parties is multiplied to 38 so as to allocate the additional seats. Therefore, the more votes cast party-list votes, the lower the percentage of votes for those in the lower strata of percentage ranking.
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