Devolutive effect of the list vote: how it works

Ticking the box at the head of the list (the "case de tête") means voting for a list in the order the party has set. Ticking a name means voting for a person. Both count towards the number of seats the list wins, but they do not weigh the same on who gets elected: since the Act of 27 December 2000, only half of the list-box votes follow the order of presentation.

What does a voter decide by ticking the list box?

They leave the order to the party. RTBF sums up the gesture in a few words: the voter "validates, in a way, the order established on the list for the distribution" (article of 31 May 2024, updated in September). Candidates are ranked by the party before the election.

The preference vote is the other gesture. The voter ticks one candidate, or several on the same list in the elections that allow it, and the vote is added to each one's personal total.

For sharing seats between lists, the two gestures are equivalent. A list's electoral figure adds up all the ballots that go to it, whether list-box or named, as explained in the article on the D'Hondt method. The difference appears afterwards, when it comes to deciding which names fill the seats the list has won.

Two votes, one electoral figure: the comparison

Both choices are legitimate and valid. This article describes the mechanics, not what anyone should do.

How is the transfer calculated on a worked case?

Three steps, set out by the Federal Public Service Interior. First the eligibility figure (chiffre d'éligibilité) is calculated: the list's electoral figure divided by the number of seats plus one, rounded up. Next, the votes cast in the list box alone are set aside, and half of them are kept. That half is then paid out to the candidates in the order of the list, until each reaches the eligibility figure or the reserve runs out.

Take a fictional list that has won three seats with 28,000 ballots, of which 8,000 are list-box-only votes. The eligibility figure is 28,000 divided by 4, so 7,000. The reserve to be transferred is 4,000. Preference votes can be plural, which is why their sum exceeds the number of ballots.

C and D reach the eligibility figure unaided. A, first on the list, receives 3,000 votes to get there. 1,000 votes remain, and they go to B. Seats go to the highest totals, so C, D and A.

Without the transfer, B would have taken the third seat with 5,000 personal votes, 1,000 more than A. With it, the order is reversed: 7,000 against 6,000.

These figures are a demonstration, redone according to the rule published by the FPS Interior.

Since when has the list box counted for only half?

Since the reform of December 2000. The Act of 27 December 2000, published in the Belgian Official Gazette (Moniteur belge) on 24 January 2001, aims to "halve the devolutive effect of votes cast in the list box" for elections to the Chamber. Before it, all of these votes were transferred.

The history is longer. In the chapter that Anne-Emmanuelle Bourgaux, Thibault Gaudin and Jean-Benoit Pilet devote to the question, the list box appears in 1877 when ballots began to be printed before the election. Proportional representation arrives in 1899 and gives it its devolutive effect. Plural preference voting is introduced in 1995, the halving in 2000.

The same authors put figures on the use of preference votes in the Chamber: a majority of ballots has contained at least one since 1995, with a peak of 66.5% in 2003 and 57% in 2014.

The question remains whether these votes change who is elected. Between 1945 and 1991, 23 of 3,382 MPs were elected outside the order of presentation. In 2003, there were 18 MPs and 7 senators, 13.2% of those elected according to the authors. In 2014, seven MPs out of 150.

Five different dosages depending on the authority

Since the 2012-2014 reform of constitutive autonomy, six entities set their own rules on transfers, the same authors recall. The table below gathers the dosages I was able to source, with their date.

The Walloon regional policy declaration 2024-2029 states, on page 12, an intention to "strengthen the voter's choice" by abolishing "the devolutive effect of the list box and the list of substitutes". I found no adopted text as of 17 October 2026: the exact state of Walloon law and the Flemish and Brussels dosages for 2024 should be checked on official sites before any use.

Keep or abolish the devolutive effect: two readings of representation

The debate is old, and it does not follow a straight line between political families: according to Bourgaux, Gaudin and Pilet, some favour the voter's autonomy, others party organisation, and others still waver. The arguments answer each other point by point.

For keeping it

The devolutive effect stabilises the order of presentation, in a logic of collective action. According to the CRISP (a Belgian socio-political research centre), cited by the Groupe du Vendredi in 2019, abolition would encourage the personalisation of campaigns. Pascal Delwit considers that it would harm legislative work, which is less visible than celebrity. A newcomer with no media network would also find it harder to be elected. A study by Cevipol, reported by the same source, shows that a significant share of the electorate defers to party order, even where that choice does not exist.

For abolishing it

Again according to the CRISP, reducing the devolutive effect gives more weight to each voter's vote in determining who is elected. The Groupe du Vendredi reports the case of a candidate who obtained more preference votes than two women candidates placed ahead of him, and who denounced a "Belgian-style democracy". The 2024-2029 Walloon declaration defends the same principle: strengthening the voter's choice. Finally, the chapter's authors note that the list box is opaque: without a devolutive effect, it amounts to following the order of personal scores, which the voter may not realise.

Two legal safeguards have already bounded the discussion. The Council of State noted that abolition reduced equality between women and men, and the Constitutional Court suspended the 2006 Flemish reform on the ground that it could mislead the voter.

What happens if you tick the list box and a candidate?

The ballot remains valid, and only the preference vote is kept. RTBF puts it this way: "the list-box vote is then no longer taken into account." The FPS Interior specifies, for the Brussels Parliament, that the list vote is then treated as void.

A few checkpoints, useful on counting night:

• The list-box vote counts in the list's electoral figure, like a named vote.
• Only half of the votes in the list box alone are transferred, in the order of presentation.
• A candidate who reaches the eligibility figure with personal votes receives no transfer.
• The dosage changes from one authority to another: do not apply the Chamber's rule to another election.
• A party that wins a seat does not choose its elected member alone: the order of presentation applies only within the limit of the reserve.

Where to check the figures

On elections.fgov.be for rules and results, and on parliament websites for decrees.

The parties' positions on institutional reform can be read, without ranking, in the ranking and the comparison tool; the scores published there reflect a position on an axis, never a quality, as the methodology explains. To place this rule within the country's layout, see also the electoral constituency where you vote.

Sources: FPS Interior, counting, seat allocation and designation of those elected; Act of 27 December 2000 (Belgian Official Gazette, 24 January 2001); RTBF, the list-box vote, 31 May 2024, and the list-box puzzle, 11 October 2018; Bourgaux, Gaudin and Pilet, "La case de tête et son effet dévolutif", Larcier; Groupe du Vendredi, "Faut-il supprimer la case de tête ?", 8 June 2019; Walloon Government, regional policy declaration 2024-2029. The worked examples in this article are demonstration calculations.