I'm doing an honours uni course in comparative politcs of countries with Westminster-style Parliaments. These include Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. Canadian and British elections are straight forward. When you vote, you mark an X beside one candidate's name. The candidate with the most Xs beside their name wins the electoral district and wins a seat in the House of Commons. The party with the most winning candidates become the government. The leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister. It gets a little more complex in Australia, but not that much. Australians rank their candidates. Winners are determined differently whether it's a House of Representatives or Senate. It's still understandable. In the lower house votes of the lowest scoring candidates are transferred to the voters' next preference until one candidate wins a majority of the seats. The party with the most winning candidates become the government. The leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister. In the Senate, the entire state is an electoral district and three or six senators are selected. Seats are assigned when a candidate meets a quota. Votes are transferred around until the seats are filled. You can still follow it. Then you get to Ireland. Their elections for the lower house are like the Australian Senate elections, but their electoral districts are more or less county boundaries, and they elect three to five members to an electoral district. To make it complicated, they have taken all the easy to understand English names and translated them all to Klingon, but you can follow it. Then there is New Zealand with its Mixed Member Proportional. It's like a German election, but it's not. People vote twice, once for an MP like in Canada and the UK, and once for a party like Europeans and Israelis do. Even that's easy to follow. It's the assigning of seats and determining the winner. Even though a party wins a majority of districts, if they don't win the majority of the vote, they don't win the election or something like that. You don't get any seats from the PR side unless you get 5% of the national vote or your party wins a district seat. The district seats are deducted from the list seats and redistributed. I'm lost already before we get into underhangs and overhangs. How does this make any sense? Our PM has decided that 2015 was the last Canadian election that was run with out single member plurality system. They have four years to replace it. Australia's alternative vote system seems most reasonable. It's impossible to evaluate New Zealand's system if it's difficult to understand it. Help!
I know what you mean. I was there during an election once. Never again. I mean I had to drink the beer (which is vastly improved to what it used to be many years ago) just to get my head unfuddled. http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system Yes I know you can use Google I think the key (ahem forgive the pun - PM of NZ name and all that) is here: Unlike in the UK where that first past the post system is basically winner take all, in NZ it seems as if the system is set up to give any government just enough of a majority to get things done but not enough to have such a landslide that they can basically thumb their collective nose at the opposition parties and Members and the electorate at large. Perhaps that's a starting point for your evaluation? Forgot to add - I think it allows for election of individuals from smaller parties or interest groups as well. I'm thinking Maori and others.
Thanks. The little orange fellow who spoke with funny sounding vowels explained everything. So, the list ballot determines the number of seat a party gets. The district candidates fill the seats first then the list candidates complete the list. Now I understand how it works. So if the banana party is going to get 51% of the vote and win a bunch of district seats, and the plantain party (which is similar to the banana) is going to only get 1%, the leader of the banana party could advise people in one district to vote for the plantain candidate. Because of PR, it won't affect bananas seat count, but it would elect an ally. I guess also, the the leaders of the banana and plantain parties shouldn't have their plan recorded by a reporter.
I'd love to say that you have it - but in my ignorance I can only think that it sounds like a pretty good explanation
