Belgian electoral law clearly and explicitly describes a procedure by which proportional representation is refined through grouping of lists from different districts of the same province. However, the actual practice of provincial electoral boards diverges from legal prescriptions to the extent that about 10 % of the seats at the House of Representatives are mis-occupied, though there is absolutely nothing that could impede a strict application of the law.

The technical changes in the local-elections law that were recently implemented have only had a negligible effect on the electoral results. As a matter of fact they did not bring about any change in the two major evils that beset local elections in Belgium. These are indeed dominated by a particular system of allocation of seats that systematically deviates from proportional representation and is heavily resented as such by a considerable part of the public opinion. The recent modifications allow a (...) voting method that wilt - from now on and increasingly so in the future - give a possibility to particular factions that are slightly stronger within a certain party to conquer a far more than proportional share of the party seats andmight well come close to the total number of seats allocated to a certain party. It is indeed the democratic nature of the electoral system in Belgium that is at stake here. (shrink)