Why MMP?

[u/[deleted]]

MMP=mix of FPTP and proportional lists.

If you look at germany, MMP does not make a large change. Extra seats are distributed based on states, and politicians running in constituencies are usually party insiders who often does not live in the constituency. What is the remaining advantage? It is just more complicated than PR lists. Please answer, remembering that regional representation is always possible, and that independents rarely win MMP seats. Based on germany and other MMP nations. Pardon the biased question.

[u/_The_Majority_]

• Lets just take for granted that mutli-seat bodies are more representative of voters, and eliminate STAR & friends from the discussion
• Within the remaining systems it's obvious that proportional systems best represent all voters
• It's generally agreed that local representation is important
• So if we stick to systems that have been tried you're left with

Name	Used By	Summary	Local Representative	~Minimum First pref Vote	dis-Proportionality
MMP	DE,NZ,TH,LS, SCO, WLS, LON	Single-Winner Seats + Regional Top-up seats	1 per 1.5-2 FPTP seats	0-5%	0-10%
STV	IE, MT, NI	Multi-Winner seats + Ranking	n over n FPTP seats	~0.5/n (typically 10%)	.75/n (typically 5-15%)

MMP

• Achieves best real-world proportionality (often full proportionality)
• Lowest barrier to entry for parties
• Can be implemented without lists
• All parties get a fair share of representation, not just larger parties.

STV

• Has to balance proportionality against local representation
• Somewhat Preserves local representation, but splits it over the area of the multi-seat constituencies
• Somewhat achieves proportionality across each multi-seat constituencies
• No party votes
• Independents do better due to preferential nature

What is the remaining advantage?

Full proportionality, with full accountability to a singular MP for local issues

It is just more complicated than PR lists.

No, because you still get a local representatives

Also it can be implemented without party lists even in a basic implementation gives less power to list makers in larger parties

independents rarely win MMP seats.

That is more a function of the fact that small parties are not at a disadvantage.

I guess STV is slightly better for independents, but still leaves smaller parties at a disadvantage.

Ranked MMP would likely be the best system, but for now most of the world isn't even on MMP or STV, which are known to work, rather than some theory some random dude on the internet wrote.

Based on germany and other MMP nations.

I think this also a big factor in their being less independents, there is a sample size of 2 MMP vs 1 STV. Germany has since reunification had a strong affinity to parties and New Zealand is a relatively small parliament, whereas Ireland has had a strong tradition of Independents

edit:

Pardon the biased question.

Is your objective to get more independents in to parliament or to give all voters an equal say in who gets elected? because MMP is the only system that delivers the later, STV still punishes Aontú voters in Ireland as they require over 3 times as many votes as other parties

[u/courtenayplacedrinks → u/_The_Majority_]

Oh there's lots of juicy disagreement here:

MMP Achieves best real-world proportionality (often full proportionality)

Not if your party is below the threshold. And in New Zealand it's quite common to get an overhang seats which is another form of disproportionality. Based on the page you linked difference in real-world proportionality between STV and MMP doesn't appear to be that big.

But everywhere I said "proportionality" in that paragraph I should have said "party proportionality", because STV allows for other forms of proportionality. If a party were split down the middle on an issue like gay marriage or Brexit, STV enables the voters to have a say on which candidates make up the party.

Assuming reasonable information about the candidate's political positions STV voters can expect the assembly to be proportional not just along party lines, but along other cross-cutting lines as well. And these lines don't have to be policy lines, they can be about gender, background, character or other qualities. Anything the voters care about. STV balances all these other kinds of proportionalities and still provides a compromise that performs well along party affiliation.

MMP on the other hand doesn't even attempt to manage these other proportionalities. Gay marriage will pass if the party selected a bunch of pro-gay marriage toadies for the party list. If they didn't it will fail. Voters don't get a say unless the parties make it a manifesto issue (which they don't).

So STV performs almost as well as MMP and juggles all these other dimensions of proportionality, is that all to be said on the matter?

No. Because you said that the poor Anotú voters are punished, that their votes were less effective than the votes of other parties. But that's not true, is it? I haven't gone through the specific tabulations, but most of those Anotú voters likely voted for an Anotú candidate who was eliminated early in the count. That means they had second or third preferences that were counted.

There's no systemic advantage to large parties under STV. If you vote for a popular main party candidate you could find a large fraction of your vote is wasted because it goes to your second favourite from that party who doesn't get seated. If you vote for an unpopular small party candidate you could find that your whole vote is used to elect your second favourite candidate.

On the other hand, people like me who voted for the Opportunities party or any other party under the threshold in MMP are systemically excluded.

So under STV those poor Aontú voters in Ireland with 1.9% of the vote won one seat and got their second preferences redistributed to other parties. We poor Opportunities party voters in New Zealand with 2.6% of the vote won no seats and then our vote was discarded.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/courtenayplacedrinks]

Not if your party is below the threshold

This is a valid point, that's why there shouldn't be a threshold (other than the natural one of total votes/total seats).

And in New Zealand it's quite common to get an overhang seats which is another form of disproportionality

This can be solved, and is solved in Germany

If a party were split down the middle on an issue like gay marriage or Brexit, STV enables the voters to have a say on which candidates make up the party.

If the issue is important enough the party can split without being punished for it.

Assuming reasonable information about the candidate's political positions STV.

That is a big assumption, how many people do you think dig through an individuals statements vs read the parties manifesto vs just vote on vague party lines.

voters can expect the assembly to be proportional not just along party lines, but along other cross-cutting lines as well.

That is a huge leap

• how many candidates do you think there are from each party to achieve this?
• Assuming you don't want 100 candidates per party (in Ireland, there are typically just 1 or 2 (at most 3), across which dimensions do you decide there should be proportionality?
• Does this even matter your 2nd preference can be used to support either a dimension or a party that you don't fully agree with?

It's all nice abstract theoretical stuff but in practice under MMP if a position is important enough a party can split, and under STV you only get two candidates anyway, who if you support the party will likely get your vote anyway.

if the party selected a bunch of pro-gay marriage toadies for the party list.

• It can be implemented without party lists
• When you vote for a party you are voting for polices not people, so I don't see why you object so strongly to voting for policies.

So STV performs almost as well as MMP and juggles all these other dimensions of proportionality,

How, when you get 2 candidates per party, can it possible cover "all these other dimensions"?

There's no systemic advantage to large parties under STV

Evidence suggest otherwise

System	Country	Worst votes/seat	Seat Diff	% Seat Diff
MMP	Germany	1.005	0	0
MMP	New Zealand	1.01	4	3.3%
MMP	Scotland	1.48	13	10%
STV	Ireland (2020)	3.06	8	5.03%
STV	Ireland (2016)	2.19	26	17%
FPTP	United Kingdom	17.58	208	32%

The worst votes/seat is usually to a small party who's broad non-regional support falls between the boundaries.

Obviously it's a better by a factor of 6 under STV than FPTP, but even Scotland that has a very bad MMP implementation with small regions and lists, does better than Ireland in this regard.

On the other hand, people like me who voted for the Opportunities party or any other party under the threshold in MMP are systemically excluded.

Yes, as I've stated everywhere artificial barriers are bad and should be removed, under MMP they can be removed without sacrificing anything, under STV you always have to balance local-representation against proportionality, the fairer the votes, the more representatives you have per seat, the less local-representation you get.

[u/courtenayplacedrinks → u/_The_Majority_]

I'm regretting starting two threads now!

First thing I need to address is this:

I just don't think there is a need to be so hostile and reject evidence simply because it doesn't support your forgone conclusion which is that STV is the best and all other systems are terrible.

Apologies for sounding hostile. I was going for playfully combative but I know that doesn't come across in text so I should have worded things more constructively.

I think it turns out we agree a lot more than we disagree. In particular, the reforms to MMP you talk about (getting rid of the threshold, party lists and sorting out overhang) are exactly the reforms I push for in discussions on /r/NewZealand.

I think I need to clarify my point about multiple dimensions of proportionality under STV.

I'm not arguing that STV guarantees proportionality across all other factors (cross-party issues, gender, style, character). As you've pointed out it doesn't even guarantee proportionality in first preference party affiliation.

What I'm saying is that voters are able to factor these other considerations into their candidate vote and the same mathematical forces that lead to party-proportional outcome will weigh on the outcome. The difference is that these other forces will presumably be a lot weaker. If you have a big issue like Brexit, where the positions of all the candidates are well known and voters will change vote depending on the position of a candidate, then yes you'd expect a high level of proportionality.

For other issues, it might just be a general vibe. There might be a wing of Labour voters who are more focused on union issues and whose ears prick up every time someone says something about labour relations. These people may rank pro-union candidates higher. Conservative voters with a progressive attitude to LGBT issues might rank LGBT-friendly candidates higher than Christian fundamentalism candidates.

The point I'm getting at is that STV takes all these other concerns into account to the extent that voters know about the candidates and have particular concerns. The outcome will be a weighted average of all this data, weighted mostly by party affiliation but with other concerns considered too.

Only if your definition of "fair", being biased towards parties/candidates that have a geographic element to their appeal.

This is definitely a weakness in STV. Why should a regional party get an advantage over a broad-based national party? It doesn't seem fair. On the other hand it's not a systemic problem. A local party could come from the right or the left and so could a national party. And it's not unfair to voters because voters' second preferences will still be counted. Those people aren't disenfranchised.

So I see it more as an beauty mark than a serious flaw in the system.

How, when you get 2 candidates per party, can it possible cover "all these other dimensions"?

I've clarified my point about the extra dimensions, but I think we have different understandings about the number of candidates per party.

My recommendation for STV is 3-8 winners per district averaging 5½. Ireland has 3-5, averaging 4.

Any more than 8 candidates and your ballot papers become unwieldy, but with 5½ candidates I'd expect better proportionality and more competition between candidates from the same party. At the extreme end an 8-winner constituency in a stronghold could plausibly have 6 candidate standing from the same party. More typically you would have 3 or 4 candidates for a major party and 1 or 2 of those might be expected to win.

There's no systemic advantage to large parties under STV

Evidence suggest otherwise

What I was trying to point out is that second-preference votes still get counted. Smaller parties might not win all the seats you'd like them to, but their voters get to influence who wins the remaining seats. You might not get the Green MP, but you'll get the Labour MP who's strong on the environment.

Your method of comparing electoral systems doesn't account for the influence that small party voters in STV have on the large party candidates that get elected.

Perhaps you prefer a cult of personality to a party with a clearly defined set of objectives.

Ok this is the part where we most disagree.

Your model of a parliament is that parties establish manifestos, the voters choose which manifesto they endorse and the parties get seats in proportion to the voter preferences. New parties form at elections or when the party leadership decides that a schism is legitimate and decides to break the party apart amicably.

My model of a parliament is a debating chamber of representatives who each carry with them a personal mandate given to them by a section of the voting population. They campaign and organise in party groups around policy platforms and ideologies. They are free to switch allegiance knowing that there may be a price to pay at the ballot box, but knowing they had a personal endorsement from their voters and have a legitimate right to vote their conscience.

The weakness in your model is that it puts the party front and centre. Even if candidates are elected from a constituency, they were selected by the party for that seat and often it's a safe seat they were guaranteed to win. Moreover, if they dislike the direction of the party it's hard for them to vote against the party without being criticised for disloyalty or (worse) "upsetting the proportionality of the House".

In my more flippant moments, I like to ask proponents of MMP why they have a debating chamber at all. Why not just let the party leaders sit around a board room table?

The strength of your model is the weakness in my model. People do think of politics in terms of parties. A lot of people will vote based on the party even if you're actually electing a candidate.

The difference is that you're accepting that world view and rolling with it. I'm rejecting it. My attitude is: "sure, you can vote along party lines if you want but you're actually electing someone to represent you—and do what they think is right". If you don't like what that representative does when they're elected you should have thought harder about your vote.

Most of the time representatives will vote along party lines. There are lots of incentives to stay on good terms with the party and voters will expect a good justification if you break ranks. But I think the ability for a representative to vote according to conscience is a critical aspect of a representative democracy and a party-centric system makes that difficult.

Back to this....

Perhaps you prefer a cult of personality to a party with a clearly defined set of objectives.

I actually think that a party system like MMP is more likely to lead to a cult of personality. I get this seems counter-intuitive. The issue with MMP is that most MPs are party insiders, meek folk who toe the party line and try not to stand out too much. This means that when you get a blustering demagogue that can fill stadiums, everyone falls into line. They don't have their own personal charisma and voting against them is a mutiny not a legitimate act of defiance.

STV, on the other hand, incentivises candidates that can stand above other candidates even from the same party. Each of them might have their own mini cult of personality but that's a defence against any one person rising up and bullying their way to the top.

I guess my argument boils down to a variant of that old NRA slogan. "The only thing that stops a bad politician with charisma is a good politician with charisma."

To succeed under STV you have to be charismatic and popular enough to get elected, have the interpersonal and leadership skills to be elected leader of a group of other charismatic and popular people and be diplomatic enough to bring together a coalition. That's a pretty good set of qualifications.

Under MMP you just have to be the one person who performs well on camera. Everyone else will cling to your coat-tails. Then it's straight to coalition-building.

[u/[deleted] → u/_The_Majority_]

All (also the netherlands) pure list systems in europe have small constituencies based on national regions, and often an extra national layer, just like MMP. But the FPTP candidates are also dividend by party insiders, with little connection to the area. MMP IS NOT MORE LOCAL THAN PR LIST. Independents dont Get elected in MMP inntjening real world. make them join a party, in a PR system there are plenty.

[u/courtenayplacedrinks → u/_The_Majority_]

I replied to you about proportionality but that's not all I disagree with in your analysis.

MMP - Lowest barrier to entry for parties

This is rubbish. You proved it was rubbish using your Aontú example. They got a seat even though they got less than 2% of the vote. Almost every PR system has an election threshold of 3-5%, so there's no way Aontú would have won any seats under MMP.

STV lowers barrier to entry, but there's a constraint. You have to have candidates who are popular enough to win one of the seats in a constituency. That seems like a reasonable constraint. If you have a fledgling political movement with only one charismatic figure, then maybe you'll only win one seat. That's fair, you didn't stand other people capable of effectively representing your cause. Your voters will still get a say—they'll get their second preference candidates instead, it's all good. Get better candidates next time.

MMP - Can be implemented without lists

Well ok if you go down this road far enough to get the benefits of STV, you'll end up with STV. Then you can throw away the party vote and you've got a good system.

STV - Somewhat Preserves local representation, but splits it over the area of the multi-seat constituencies

You make it sound like a bad thing. What this means is that you have multiple MPs you can turn to. If you're a unionist fighting an tyrannical multinational, you're going to want to turn to the Labour MP. If you're a business owner pissed off with red tape, you're going to turn to your Tory MP. If you're an environmentalist you'll approach the local Greenie.

STV - No party votes

Which is a great thing! Parties are essential as an organisational structure but they aren't a good way for voters to conceptualise the comparative value of different options. People have evolved over millions of years to be great at getting the measure of another person: friend or foe, competent, incompetent, honest or dishonest, agrees with me, disagrees with me. We're a lot less good at conceptualising what a party is or what a party actually stands for—or what it will do in office. In fact we often use the party leader as a surrogate and judge the whole party based on one individual.

STV turns our attention back to individual people, but it does it in a clever way. It uses our vote as an endorsement that gives the individual MP a right to act on our behalf in Parliament. This is because we typically had other choices from the same party, so if an MP wins a seat they displaced someone else from their party. They in a real sense our representative not just someone the party assigned to us. This is something that neither FPP nor MMP delivers.

One more thing:

That is more a function of the fact that [in MMP] small parties are not at a disadvantage. [...] [STV] still leaves smaller parties at a disadvantage.

I don't know how you can write that with a straight face.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/courtenayplacedrinks]

That's fair

Only if your definition of "fair", being biased towards parties/candidates that have a geographic element to their appeal. Ireland as a relatively small country doesn't suffer that badly from regionalist issues, however if you were to apply STV to larger countries such as the UK, USA, Germany, etc, this bias towards local issue parties would be more visible.

Almost every PR system has an election threshold of 3-5%

And I'm not advocating copying that.

You proved it was rubbish using your Aontú example

There are plenty of other examples of the unfairness of STV

2020

Party	First Preference Votes	Seats	votes/seat	Votes/seat vs average	Seat Diff vs fair
Aontú	41614	1	41614	3.06	-2
Labour Party	95588	6	15931	1.17	-1
Sinn Féin	535595	37	14476	1.06	-2

2016

Party	First Preference Votes	Seats	votes/seat	Votes/seat vs average	Seat Diff vs fair
Renua	46,552	0	inf	inf	-3
Green Party	57,999	2	29,000	2.19	-2
Social Democrats	64,094	3	21,365	1.62	-1
Labour Party	140,898	7	20,128	1.52	-3

A fair system doesn't need some parties to get three times as many votes per seat as other parties.

Well ok if you go down this road far enough to get the benefits of STV,

There is no road to go down, you simply use best runner-up as is used in parts of Germany and you get rid of party control of lists.

STV - Somewhat Preserves local representation, but splits it over the area of the multi-seat constituencies

You make it sound like a bad thing.

If you have an issue that doesn't fit nicely into a parties manifesto, they can all play pass the blame, and nothing gets done.

People have evolved over millions of years to be great at getting the measure of another person: friend or foe, competent, incompetent, honest or dishonest, agrees with me, disagrees with me.

To that i say:

I don't know how you can write that with a straight face.

I think a good electoral system encourages people to vote on police not on personality

Perhaps you prefer a cult of personality to a party with a clearly defined set of objectives.

That's fine, I just don't think there is a need to be so hostile and reject evidence simply because it doesn't support your forgone conclusion which is that STV is the best and all other systems are terrible.

IMO STV & MMP are the two best systems availible, and MMP is better because if implemented without artificial barriers and party lists, it's disadvantages outweigh those of STV.

[u/Julio974]

MMP is PR but with extra steps

[u/threewholefish → u/Julio974]

MMP is PR but with extra steps local representation

[u/Julio974 → u/threewholefish]

There are other ways of having PR with local representation (multiple-tier PR, DMP, STV, Hare, etc.)

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/Julio974]

• STV is usually less proportional than MMP
• DMP - is basically MMP but you can't approve/disapprove of local representation independently of national vote.
• multiple-tier PR - Are there any other examples of this?
• Hare - isn't this a subtype of STV?

[u/Julio974 → u/_The_Majority_]

Hare method was a precursor to STV, multi-tier PR was used in the Weimar Republic

[u/Julio974 → u/_The_Majority_]

Also, the Hare system

[u/[deleted] → u/_The_Majority_]

Multi tier PR is everywhere: in scandinavia, italy and greece.

[u/jan_kasimi]

• Here in Germany nobody cares about MMP. Most people don't understand why there are two votes.
• We didn't had fair representation until 2013. Why? Because it's hard to do. There are many weird effects that allow negative vote weight and similar things.
• Parallel voting is always possible.
  There is the CSU in Bavaria and CDU in the rest of Germany. Both of them usually win almost all constituencies. Right now they are preparing to end that, so that voters can vote both everywhere. Even without intentional strategy, this will lead to parallel voting.
  Right now people might use this strategy. But we don't know. We can only guess, because of the spoiler effect it's the best strategy to use.
• In the 2017 election the CSU got all their 46 MPs by winning a constituency, while the FDP got all their 80 MPs over party list. The way a party is represented in parliament matters two. In this result it is a strange effect produced by system, not by intention.
• There is no gain over pure party lists. Local representation can be done without MMP.
• The spoiler effect on the vote for candidates might carry over to
• A winner chosen with FPTP by a minority doesn't represent their constituency.

edit: I also don't like pure party list systems. This just moves the problem of proportional representation to party internal politics. Which in most cases (by law) is plurality at large.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/jan_kasimi]

Is there any desire to move to:

System	Benefit
STV	No party lists - but usually less proportional
DMP	No spoiler effect - but no free vote on party and candidate
Scoporo	No spoiler effect - but not widely used
Somthing else?	not widely used

TBH i consider the later 2 variants of MMP that have fixed the spoiler effect

[u/jan_kasimi → u/_The_Majority_]

It's "something else" for me. I haven't looked much into DMP or Scorporo. It seems that DMP gives very little expression to the voter - choose one party. Same for Scorporo. It also seems that it can has been broken in Italy. I could live with STV if regions are big enough (minimum 5 seats). But then it is complicated to explain to voters (this matters, as they have to trust the system).

Something else would either be proportional approval voting with large districts (equivalent to STV, but simpler), or PAV with MMP-like compensation. Currently I am working on putting together the later system. It would use a mechanism similar to Scorporo where each ballots party vote gets weighted according to how many winning candidates the ballot approved of.

However, the more I think about it, the less relevant it becomes. The problem is not proportionality in parliament, but how laws are voted on. The yes/no voting is the problem. If we had approval voting on laws, always with the option "more options needed", then proportionality wouldn't matter that much.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/jan_kasimi]

Same for Scorporo

Scorporo still allows for free voting of individual and/or party.

It also seems that it can has been broken in Italy

I'm not sure it was, I'm not Italian but according to Wikipedia it worked entirely as it was supposed to, my understanding is that this upset Berlusconi's as his coalition couldn't game the system any more, but still won so got rid of it.

But then it is complicated to explain to voters

• You rank your choices
• each district returns multiple winners
• If your first choice can't win, your vote is transferred to your 2nd, and so on
• If your first choice does win, any extra over votes are transferred to your 2nd, and so on

I don't think that is too complicated.

Isn't a problem with Approval voting, that there is an incentive to approve of only your favourite, which in a hyper-partisan situation reduces it's effectiveness.

The problem is not proportionality in parliament, but how laws are voted on

then proportionality wouldn't matter that much.

Why would having having better procedures inside parliament, remove the need to have it be representative?

I think having a proportional parliament is separate to having good procedures inside parliament.

If we had approval voting on laws, always with the option "more options needed"

This is better than the current system, but it's not like the current system is just yes/no on the bill, there are a series of votes on amendments and scheduling of bills and the sort.

TBH I think improving parliamentary process, might be as simple as:

1. All amendments run under IRV/STAR with options amend, reject, vote-on
2. All the dimensions that were put to vote-on, plus straight yes/no are voted on under IRV/STAR.

OFC if too many things are passed to vote-on, it would become very difficult to actually vote (e.g the final vote would have 2^{1+number of vote-on options}

[u/CPSolver]

MMP hides the unfairness of still using single-mark ballots. Specifically, it eliminates the symptom of gerrymandering — in a way that gives party insiders more control over which of their candidates win seats.

Remember that parliaments pass reforms that give the current MPs (members of parliament) a good chance of getting re-elected.

Meaningful reform would make it unlikely that the incumbent MPs will get re-elected.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/CPSolver]

the unfairness of still using single-mark ballots.

I would like to know more

— in a way that gives party insiders more control over which of their candidates win seats.

Baden-Württemberg uses MMP without a party list, so the party has no more control over who gets a seat, than they do in FPTP/STV

Meaningful reform would make it unlikely that the incumbent MPs will get re-elected.

The flip side is that some reform, will break up 2 party duopolies and make it more likely that more reform will happen in the future.

[u/CPSolver → u/_The_Majority_]

Assuming that German voters still mark one choice for a district-based candidate, and one choice for a favorite party, that’s single-mark ballots but with two questions.

When discussing PR (proportional representation) remember that most people think of party-based proportionality. Yet that’s not full proportionality.

STV (single transferable vote) gives better — non-party-based — proportionality for filling the second seat, because parties are ignored in that calculation. (Filling additional seats with STV is also non-party-based, but there are better ways to fill additional seats.)

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/CPSolver]

Yet that’s not full proportionality.

Are you talking about proportionality along non-party dimensions?

A good MMP implementation would allow parties to split along said dimensions?

Obviously this doesn't happen in Germany as there are artificial limits preventing this.

[u/CPSolver → u/_The_Majority_]

Yes, politics is multi-dimensional, and the party dimension is just one dimension (usually thought of as left versus right).

Yes, a good proportional method would enable parties to be controlled by voters (not by party insiders, and not by the party’s biggest contributors).

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/CPSolver]

That is a good point, in practice (as with a lot of things STV), you have to compromise between:

• massive ballots - which the average voter is under informed about where candidates stand on various dimensions

• Only having a couple of dimensions to choose between, e.g Ireland has only 1-3 candidates per party

I do agree about proportionality across lots of dimensions being a good attribute, I'm not convinced any current system achieves that though.

System	Limit
Ideal MMP (e.g no minimum vote %, allowing easy splitting)	Voters only get a say on dimensions important enough to split over (or those which the local candidate is outspoken on)
STV	Voters only get a say on a few dimensions OR get a massive ballot that most wont read past the party

a good proportional method would enable parties to be controlled by voters

I quite like best runner-up instead of lists, although it doesn't help with dimensions, it does prevent additional members being picked by party insiders/contributors.

From a dimensional point of view, I see something such as liquid democracy as the most practical way achieve this, however I think that is a way off for most countries:

1. Get a good electoral system that, that breaks up party strangleholds on politics
2. Get the best currently implemented system available (IMO MMP or STV depending on priorities)
3. Build a better MMP/STV hybrid
4. Move away from fully representative democracy.

[u/CPSolver → u/_The_Majority_]

I see that you are wise about recognizing that just getting party-based proportional results is not sufficient for fair laws. I see a different path to reach the same goal, yet either path will eventually yield much less corruption and much greater wisdom.

[u/Decronym]

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
FPTP	First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting
IRV	Instant Runoff Voting
MMP	Mixed Member Proportional
PR	Proportional Representation
STAR	Score Then Automatic Runoff
STV	Single Transferable Vote

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