Journal of the Korean Geographical Society ISSN:1225-6633(Print) 대한지리학회지

Various electoral reforms have been discussed to address the problems initiated and accumulated by the majoritarian system of electoral district and the national proportional representative system. The amendment to the Public Official Election Act, which is based on the so-called “quasi-proportional representation system”, which consists of a district voting linked proportional representative and a regional proportional representative, is being discussed in the National Assembly. This paper estimates the number of seats of regional proportional representatives of each political party based on the simulation of voting results of the 20_th general election. The new system may induce major changes in the election results. Based on the examinations on the actual and simulated election results, some pivotal notions of the new election system can be summarized as follows. First, the earned votes by party is better associated with the number of seats. Second, the number of wasted votes is significantly reduced. Third, there is a positive change in the constellation of seats in some regions. These changes mean that some of the political goals of the amendment would be achieved. However, besides the problems of extremely complicated processes of confirming winners and consequent seat allocation and, arbitrariness of regional configuration, several problems are revealed. First, the fairness of the allocation of seats by regions is undermined. Second, the new category of wasted votes appears due to the distribution of seats by regions. As such problems may lead to dissatisfaction and demand for revision of the quasi-proportional representation system in the future, discussions on electoral systems and spatial units of elections should be continued.