Party letter

A party letter (Danish: partibogstav) is the letter used to represent parties or lists in elections in Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. The system is also used in Israel. Party letters emerged in Denmark in the beginning of the 1900s. The letters do not necessarily correspond to the abbreviation of the individual party.^[1] In Denmark, Parties are ordered alphabetically on the ballot in order of the party letter.^[2]

The current Danish party letters date back to the 1909 Copenhagen municipal election. There, the parties were assigned letters alphabetically according to their size on the council.^[3] Other party letters have been assigned based on the choices of the party. From the 1937 municipal election onwards, a uniform set of party letters have been used.^[3] Since 1943, these letters have also been used for parliamentary elections.^[4]

In Denmark, party letters are assigned by the Interior Ministry to all parties with ballot access, and each party is limited to one letter only.^[5] The letter S is reserved for Schleswig Party, while the letter X cannot be assigned due to the conflation with the X mark made on the ballot.^[5] In practice, the letters L and T are reserved for local lists, while the letter W is normally not assigned due to the conlation with the letter V (used by Venstre).^[3]

The following is a list of party letters that have been used in Danish parliamentary elections or European Parliament elections from 1943 onwards.^[4]

In Israel, party letters are assigned, separately for each election, by the Central Elections Committee, and a party can have multiple letters. However, parties represented in the outgoing Knesset have the right to reuse their letters from the last elections; new parties cannot use an existing party's letters without its consent, and are limited to two letters only. While historically, most parties in Israel used one letter, the trend is towards two and three-letter codes, as a legacy of party mergers. For example, the Likud's party letters, מחל, represent the parties which historically made it up: מ for La'am, ח for Herut, and ל for the Liberal Party. The right to use multiple letters also means that parties sometimes choose letters with a particular meaning, such as Yesh Atid's פה ("Here": when combined with the party's name, this makes up the slogan "There is a future here") or Ale Yarok's קנ (First two letters of קנביס "Cannabis": Ale Yarok was a single-issue party revolving around cannabis legalization).