Congressional-seats distribution in Ecuador and its importance on democracy

Abstract

Ecuador is a democratic State which promotes citizen participation in the decision-making process that is materialized through universal and direct suffrage. For this reason, every four years Ecuadorians cast their ballots entrusting their representation and political responsibility of the country to political parties. Several mathematicians have proposed alternatives to allocate congressional-seats under a principle of proportionality. The Código de la Democracia published in 2009, established Webster and D’Hondt as the allocation methods. These are important to the extent that depending on the formula that is applied significantly alters the control of the parliament. This research proposes to bring the reader closer to the impact that the application of the Webster method will have on the composition of the legislature in the following elections through the comparison and conversion of the results obtained in 2017 with the D’Hondt method with respect to the method that will be applied from 2021.