Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinordi
And there's also a popular amendment of PR which is mixed member proportionality which tries to bring in local representation.
Basically, voters have two votes in this system. They vote for the national party which is used to calculate the proportionality described in the first system and then they vote for the candidate in their riding. Winning at the riding level is typically first past the post. After all of the riding candidates win they then superimpose the proportionality ontop and fill in the rest of the seats so that each party makes up the national proportional representation.
For example, in a 100 seat legislature voters voted for 50% party A, 30% party B, 20% party C. There are also 50 ridings where party A won 10, party B won 20 and party C won 20.
Party C will not get any more candidates because by their 20 riding wins they now have 20% of the legislature. Party B will get an additional 10 members in the legislature based on the party priority queue and Part A will get an additional 40 members based on their priority list.
This is a popular voting system.
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There are also systems that use large ridings with multiple representatives. So Calgary NW might be 8 ridings, with 8 MLAs, where the highest 8 candidates get seats. Keeps local reps, but also gives a party that gets an evenly distributed 20% of the vote a reasonable amount of representation.
Ultimately, you can think up an essentially infinite number of ways to run an election. First past the post has a long history, so changing has a high bar.