"voting a party vs. a person" and Germany.
Note, Germany has a 'mixed system', and furthermore
one with 'two votes'.
That is:
- X% of the candidates are elected as in USA, one
elected per district (or FPTP, winner-takes-all,
single-seat-district, etc)
- the rest are elected from much larger districts making
it possible to achieve proportional representation (PR) as
many candidates are elected. (if for example, 20 elected
according to their votes, the result will be proportionate
within 5%)
- the PR system they use is based on party lists, the voter
votes for a party (which have their candidates ordered on a
party list), the party gets a proportionate number of seats
according to the total votes that party gets.
(x% votes, x% seats)
- the maybe specific mechanism in germany is that the voters
vote within both systems, "one for person and one for party".
I think the X% is 50%, that is, half of parliement is
"exactly as in USA", one "local" representative.
The other half represent the "third parties", kind of.
Note, Denmark is similar but there one has "only one vote",
one must decide to vote "person or party".
(the german system is smarter?? less "tactical voting stuff")
Additionally there are (always) "limits" on (a) the proportional system,
a party has to get something like more than 4-6%(?) of the
votes, or at least one single-seat-district, etc..
The idea is, for example, that a small "danish" minority
close the danish border should get representation although
they are less than the overall PR-threshhold, and do not
have a majority in any single-seat-district.
Smart, practical system, one reason B.C. Canada now seems
to look into it.
PS germany (as well as sweden) additionally uses a "correction
mechanism" to correct for that slightly un-proportional
result one gets (that 20 -> 5%). A small number of "extra"
(secondary) seats are added to achieve overall proportionality |
