Blank Voting and Electoral Representation: Reassessing the Claim that Blank Votes Benefit the Leading Party

Blank Voting and Electoral Representation: Reassessing the Claim that Blank Votes Benefit the Leading Party This preprint examines a widely repeated claim in public discourse: that casting a blank vote disproportionately benefits the leading political party, whereas voting for smaller parties limits its parliamentary advantage. Using a conceptual and quantitative framework based on the Greek electoral system, the study analyzes the parliamentary consequences of votes that do not result in representation. Through numerical simulations and a formal mathematical demonstration, it compares two categories of non-represented votes: (a) blank votes that are excluded from seat allocation and (b) votes cast for parties that fail to surpass the electoral threshold required for parliamentary representation. The analysis is conducted under a set of institutional assumptions, including a 300-seat parliament, a 3% electoral threshold, and scenarios both with and without a seat bonus for the leading party. The findings show that, whenever the same number of votes is excluded from the seat-allocation process, blank votes and votes for non-represented votes produce identical parliamentary outcomes. In both cases, seats are redistributed proportionally among the parties that enter parliament. The study argues that any overrepresentation of large parties originates primarily from institutional features of the electoral system, particularly electoral thresholds and bonus-seat provisions, rather than from the act of casting a blank vote itself. By distinguishing mathematical seat-allocation effects from political, symbolic, or strategic interpretations of voting behavior, the paper contributes to a clearer understanding of how non-represented votes influence parliamentary representation. Preprint (not peer-reviewed). English version. Version 1.0, June 2026. A Greek-language version of this paper is also available.