There are a number of important variations in ways of voting between the various List Proportional Representation (PR) systems. One of the most important is whether lists are open, closed, or free in terms of the ability of electors to vote for a preferred candidate as well as for a party.
The majority of List PR systems in the world are closed, meaning that the order of candidates elected by that list is fixed by the party itself, and voters are not able to express a preference for a particular candidate. The List PR system instituted for the first democratic South African elections in 1994 was a good example of a closed list, see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management. The ballot paper contained the party names and symbols, and a photograph of the party leader, but no names of individual candidates. Voters simply chose the party they preferred; the individual candidate elected as a result was pre-determined by the parties themselves. This meant that parties could include some candidates (perhaps members of minority ethnic and linguistic groups, or women) who might have had difficulty getting elected otherwise.
One negative aspect of closed lists is that voters have no say in determining who the representative of their party will be. Closed lists are also extremely unresponsive to changes in events. In East Germany's pre-unification elections of 1990, the top-ranked candidate of one party was exposed as a secret-police informer only four days before the election, and immediately expelled from the party; but because lists were closed, electors had no choice but to vote for him if they wanted to support his former party.
Many of the List PR systems used in continental Europe therefore use open lists, in which voters can indicate not just their favoured party, but their favoured candidate within that party. In most of these systems the vote for a candidate as well as a party is optional and, because most voters plump for parties rather than candidates, the candidate-choice option of the ballot paper often has little effect. But in some cases (Finland is one - see Finland: Candidate Choice and Party Proportionality) this choice becomes highly important, because people must vote for candidates, and the order in which candidates are elected is determined by the number of individual votes they receive. While this gives voters much greater freedom over their choice of candidate, it also has some less desirable side effects. Because candidates from within the same party are effectively competing with each other for votes, this form of open list can lead to intra-party conflict and fragmentation. It also means that the potential benefits to the party of having lists, which feature a diverse slate of candidates, can be overturned. In open-list PR elections in Sri Lanka for example, the attempts of major Sinhalese parties to include minority Tamil candidates in winnable positions on their party lists have been quashed because many voters deliberately voted for lower-placed Sinhalese candidates instead, see Sri Lanka: Changes to Accommodate Diversity.
Some other devices are used in a small number of jurisdictions to add additional flexibility to open-list systems. In Luxembourg and Switzerland electors have as many votes as there are seats to be filled, and can distribute them to candidates either within a single party list or across several party lists as they see fit, see Switzerland. The capacity to vote for more than one candidate across different party lists (known as panachage), or to cast more than one vote for a single highly-favoured candidate (known as cumulation), both provide an additional measure of control to the voter and are categorized here as free list systems.
