Anyway

In Canada, where I live, the vot­ing sys­tem for the par­lia­ments is the easy to under­stand, but blunt, first past the post (FPTP) sys­tem (also called plur­al­ity vot­ing). The per­son who wins the most votes (a plur­al­ity) wins the seat, wheth­er they get over 50% or under 30%. I believe that it’s time we had a sys­tem that gives more people a more nuanced say in the gov­ern­ment they get; tac­tic­al vot­ing of vari­ous forms in a FPTP sys­tem only goes so far. For my own bene­fit I’ve writ­ten up the vot­ing sys­tems of 3 oth­er coun­tries in which I’ve lived. I don’t have a firm opin­ion on which one I prefer (yet).

Germany

At the Fed­er­al level in Ger­many, the vot­ing sys­tem is a ver­sion of a mixed-mem­ber pro­por­tion­al sys­tem: voters get two votes. One is for a dir­ect can­did­ate (approx­im­ately half the seats), and works by the plur­al­ity (FPTP) sys­tem. The oth­er is where the voter votes for a party. Each party has a list, and the appro­pri­ate num­ber from each party list is deemed elec­ted, depend­ing on the num­ber of votes the party got. There is a threshold for the list votes; parties have to get over 5% of the vote to get any seats via the second (list) vote, unless more than three dir­ect can­did­ates from that party are elected.

This sys­tem was set up to bal­ance many aims. Among them are the prin­ciple of equal votes (each vote must have equal weight), dis­cour­age small parties while allow­ing them, and encour­age bal­ance between vari­ous polit­ic­al views. It tends to lead to coali­tion gov­ern­ments, and is good for find­ing consensus.

Australia

Aus­tralia uses pref­er­en­tial, or ranked, vot­ing sys­tems. The voter ranks the can­did­ates in order of pref­er­ence. If one can­did­ate gets 50% + 1 (or more) first pref­er­ence votes, they are elec­ted. If not, the can­did­ate who received the few­est first pref­er­ence votes is elim­in­ated from the list, and their second pref­er­ences are dis­trib­uted. This pro­cess con­tin­ues until one can­did­ate does have 50% + 1 or more votes. There’s a vari­ation for the Sen­ate that I’m not going into.

Ranked vot­ing gives people a chance to vote for a can­did­ate they know won’t win, and give the second pref­er­ence to a main­stream can­did­ate, which makes it bet­ter than FPTP tac­tic­al vot­ing. One down­side is that you have to rank all can­did­ates in order, and it is quite pos­sible to miss a num­ber, or make some oth­er mis­take. There are some people who num­ber from 1 down the page, so the bal­lot has to be designed to take that ‘don­key vote’ into account.

New Zealand

New Zea­l­and uses a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of mixed-mem­ber pro­por­tion­al rep­res­ent­a­tion to Ger­many. (No, I’m not going into detail on the pre­cise dif­fer­ences.) Each voter has two votes: one for a dir­ect can­did­ate, and one for a party. The party vote determ­ines the over­all num­ber of seats each party is entitled to. There is a threshold, as for Ger­many, of 5% for the party vote, or one dir­ect can­did­ate elected.

There are also a cer­tain num­ber of seats reserved for the Māori elect­or­ate; those use the same vot­ing system.

Per­son­ally, I think any of these sys­tems would be bet­ter than the cur­rent FPTP sys­tem we have.