Why the Faroe Island elections matter

Piqued by the debates around the internet, including here and also over on Nick Robinson’s blog, on whether the American elections are getting undue coverage in the UK, I thought “fair’s fair, let’s write something about the next elections coming up anywhere in the world”.

Alas for me (and for you too, dear reader of this post) it turns out they are in the Faroe Island, not my area of electoral speciality. [Update: actually, Barbados comes first. But the election listing website I used didn’t say that. Bloody internet. Wouldn’t trust a word of what you find on it.]  So what can I tell you about them? Somewhat to my surprise, it turns out these elections may be of some importance to the UK…

The Faroe Islands are self-governing – they elect their own Parliament, though also elect two people to the Danish Parliament. The Prime Minister comes from Parliament whilst the High Commissioner is appointed by the Danish Queen.

The next Faroe Parliament elections will take place on Saturday, 19 January. Advanced voting at Danish embassies around the world has already taken place and the ballots closed on those.

PR will be used to elect 33 members using the d’Hondt list method with just the one list for the Faroe Islands. This will be the first outing for that electoral system, replacing the previous practice of d’Hondt in seven constituencies along with largest remainder national top-up lists to ensure proportionality overall.

Possibly though the public are more excited by the other big electoral change – the news that residents of the Faroe Islands will – for the first time – be able to vote in the Danish qualifying round of the Eurovision song contest this year.

The outcome of the Parliamentary elections may actually matter quite a lot for the UK, because an international agreement on which country gets the oil rights where in part of the North Atlantic has been postponed pending the outcome of the elections. Ireland, Iceland, Britain and Denmark have been in talks, but are yet to reach agreement and the talks were postponed until after the Faroe elections.

My tip for the result? Another close contest between those supporting and those opposing independence from Denmark.