Limitations and evaluation of electoral system improvement analyzed from the perspective of proportionality and representativeness

The principles of popular sovereignty and democracy are the basic principles of Constitution and are also limitations to revision. Since the basic system that materializes this is the electoral system, the electoral system is very important in realizing popular sovereignty and democracy. In particular, an institutional mechanism that links the will of the sovereign people to the results without distorting it is an important element in securing democratic representation and proportionality through elections. The main issue of efforts to improve the electoral system promoted in the 20th and 21st National Assembly was to improve the problem of the sovereign people's will not being reflected in the results due to the single-member district system in the current district elections. In other words, the result of the winner-takes-all system, in which only one person is elected per district under the single-member district system, the resulting problem of resignations, and the disproportionality between the party approval rating and the number of seats secured, called for improvement of proportionality in election results. However, the plan to improve the electoral system adopted and implemented after discussion in the National Assembly was implemented by maintaining the existing electoral district system, contrary to the original intention of improving the electoral system, and the semi-linked proportional representation system agreed upon and implemented in the 20th National Assembly was implemented. It resulted in distorting the will of the sovereign people, such as by creating satellite political parties. The electoral system improvement plan decided and implemented in the 20th and 21st National Assembly failed to strengthen proportionality and representativeness and undermined the political efficacy of the sovereign people, similar to before the introduction of the improvement plan. Accordingly, this paper analyzes the issues of the electoral district system and proportional representation system, which were discussed as improvement plans for the electoral system in the 20th and 21st National Assembly, and presents limitations and improvement measures.