As the nice folks at Wikipedia inform us, Israel's 120-member parliament, the Knesset, is elected via "the highest averages method of party-list proportional representation, using the d'Hondt formula."

Ah, 'party-list': driving a stake into the hearts of people who understand what it means. It's like a euphemism for 'legalised political corruption'. Of course it doesn't have to be that way, and there are some sound theoretical arguments for a party list, but in practice it is like having an entire country-full of safe seats, where the MPs are appointed by the ones on the top of the political climbing frame, rather than being elected by those making do with the hopscotch. And as we have seen all too often before, good politics, in the sense of making the country better, is not too well facilitated when MPs, or whatever they may be called in other tongues, rely on their skills of being oleaginous arseholes to get to the top.

So how did they end up like this? It's cut-and-paste time…

The State of Israel inherited the rigid system of proportional representation from the political system of the yishuv (the organized Jewish community) in mandatory times. This system was based on the zeal with which the various political parties - in which ideology and personalities played a major role - fought to preserve their independence. The justification given for the large number of parties resulting from the system was, that in a period in which major, far-reaching and rapid changes were still taking place in the population make-up as a result of immigration, it was important to enable maximal representation for various groups and opinions.

This is done by the division of valid votes given to the lists which passed the qualifying threshold, by 120, in order to determine how many votes entitle a list to a single seat. In the elections to the second and seventh Knessets the excess votes (the votes received by a list which passed the qualifying threshold [now set at 2 per cent, having previously been first 1 per cent and then 1.5 per cent], but are not sufficient for a whole seat) were distributed to those lists which had the largest number of excess votes (the Hare method). In the elections to the first Knesset, and since the elections to the eighth, the excess votes are distributed to the lists with the largest number of voters per seat - a method known in the world as Hagenbach-Bischoff (de-Hondt), and is known in Israel as the Bader-Ofer method - named after MKs Yohanan Bader (Gahal) and Avraham Ofer (Alignment) who proposed its adoption. Two lists can reach an agreement regarding the distribution of excess votes between them before the elections.

As Lewis wrote on here back in November:

It was the least-worst option at first, because Israel's borders were still fluid, large numbers of people were in the armed forces and therefore away from home, and there were a huge number of national, religious and ideological elements to accommodate.

And why do they still have it? As Lewis added, they "ended up sticking with it out of vested interests and an inability to agree on what would be better."

That doesn't mean, of course, that change isn't needed.

There are many reasons Israel could do with a new electoral system. More so than Britain, in fact, but the Israelis do have a rather more incendiary political culture to inspire such things. Staying true to the old journalistic tenet that the high-level corruption that accompanies The Power, always makes great copy, the Jerusalem Post article cited earlier focuses on one issue in particular: criminality.

Most seriously, because of the voters' inability to express disapproval of persons who may be associated with corruption or scandal, closed lists may permit criminal elements to seep into government.

This is not a theoretical consideration. During the last election campaign there were widespread allegations of attempts to bribe politicians, of corruption and vote selling. Losing candidates complained that a party's Central Committee members had offered batches of votes for a price. There were reports that known criminals had been active in membership drives and in elections to the Central Committee. Elsewhere, there were allegations were made of union funds being used, and of falsified signatures of new party members.

Israel, being a relatively teen-aged country, clearly has issues. Barring some miracle to rival the works of The One largely responsible for these issues, it's not going to get better too quickly. A new voting system certainly isn't going to make the inhabitants of the area forget their differences, kiss and make up and usher in a new era of Edenesque harmony.

It could help make the politicians less horribly corrupt, however. And a country where the men in charge are geared towards helping the people in order to help themselves is more likely to succeed than one in which they pander to their bosses in order to aid their advancement.