Hagskýrslur um kosningar - 01.01.1988, Blaðsíða 23

Forsetakjör 1988
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respectin 1984andagain in 1987,beforethe 1984
rules had been applied for the first time. The right
to vote in Iceland is now extended to:
1. Persons 18 years of age and over on election
day,
2. holding Icelandic citizenship, and
3. domiciled in Iceland or having been so within
the last four years up to December 1 prior to
election day.
Due to changes based on the Constitutional a-
mendment of 1984, the proportion of eligible vo-
ters reached 70 per cent of the population in 1987.
According to the General Elections Act each
person is to be entered on an electoral roll in his or
her commune of domicile as of December 1 prior
to the election day. At the presidential election on
June 25, 1988, the reference date was therefore
December 1, 1987. Immigrants after that date,
who qualify as voters, were to be registered in the
commune where they took up domicile.
A part of the increase in the proportion of
eligible voters since 1968 can be explained by a di-
vergence of the domiciled population and the vot-
ing population. According to the Domicile Act,
students abroad are entitled to keep their domicile
in the commune where they last resided in Iceland.
In 1969 Iceland became party to a Nordic conven-
tion on population registration, which among
other things stipulates that the registration of
immigration by one country automatically causes
registration of emigration, and loss of domicile, in
the other. As Icelandic students in the Nordic
countries no longer kept their domicile in Iceland,
special measures were taken to include them in the
electoral rolls. As previously stated, ihe right to
vote has been extended since 1987 to all otherwise
eligible persons who have emigrated from Iceland
during the preceding four years.
Local govemments base theirelectoral rolls on
preliminary registers provided by the National
Population Registry within the Statistical Bureau
of Iceland. The preliminary registers include,
among others, persons who will reach voting age
in the election year, but after the election day.
Summary table 2 on p. 13 compares the final elec-
toral rolls with the preliminary registers, and
shows the proportion of eligible voters domiciled
abroad in the preliminary registers, which was 1.9
per cent for the whole country.
The numberof voters on the electoral roll was
equally divided between men and women in the
presidential election of 1988—men outnumbered
women by 33. Main table 1 on pp. 25-30 shows
the number of eligible voters in the constituencies,
counties and communes (towns, townships, other
communes). It also shows figures for polling
stations in Reykjavík.
3. Participation in elections
In the presidential election of 1988 126,535
persons cast their vote, corresponding to 72.8 per
cent of the voters on the electoral roll. This is a
much lower figure than in previous presidential
elections, and in general elections it has not been
as low since 1933. The highest participation in
general elections was in 1956,92.1 percent. In the
referendum held in 1944 on the abrogation of the
Danish-Icelandic Union Treaty of 1918 andon the
Constitution of the Republic participation was
98.4 per cent.
Summary table 1 on p. 11 shows participation
in elections since 1874, both total figures and ac-
cording to sex. In the presidential election of 1988,
participation by males was 68.0 per cent, and by
females 77.6 per cent. This is a reversal of the
difference in participation usually observed be-
tween men and women, and a much larger one too.
The only earlier election where participation was
higher among women than men was the presiden-
tial election of 1980.
Main table 1 on pp. 25-30 shows the number
of votes cast and participation in each commune.
Voters and votes are counted in the area of regis-
tration on the electoral roll, also in the case of
persons who voted in another polling area. Sum-
mary table 3 on p. 14 shows participation, accord-
ing to sex, in the constituencies. In each of these
women’s participation is higher than that of men
by 8.8 to 10.5 percentage points. Summarytable
4 on p. 15 shows the number of communes in each
constituency by degree of participation.
4. Absentee votes
A voter who expects that he or she will not be
able to attend the election in his polling area on
election day, because of absence from the area or
for other reasons, can cast an absentee vote. The
conditions for the right to absentee voting have
been eased since it was first authorized in the
general election of 1916. Then the right was
limited to seamen and others who would be absent
from their home commune on election day and
would not exercise the right to vote in a different
polling area (cf. chapter5). In 1974 this right was
extended to those who would be in hospital and to
pregnant women who might not be able to vote on