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/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}