Could someone explain Mixed Member Proportional Representation simply? I tried Wikipedia but I tend to zone out when things get too wordy.
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An example may help. New Zealand has a system like this, here’s how it works:
There are 120* seats in the House of Representatives. The country is divided into 72 districts. Each district elects a representative in the usual way; a bunch of candidates run and whoever gets the most votes wins.
In addition, everyone gets to cast a second vote for a particular party. When all the delegates are selected, the remaining 48 seats are filled by party members such that the partisan makeup of the final legislature is proportional to that vote. E.g. if Party A wins 50% of the partisan vote and 40 of the 72 districts, they will get 20 additional seats so that they end up with 60 out of 120 overall.
* currently NZ’s legislature has 123 members because of something called “overhang” which happens with MMPR systems: sometimes a party will win more districts than their proportional vote should allow for. In NZ’s case, they simply temporarily increase the size of the legislature to allow for that.
The idea is to combine the best parts of district-based representation and proportional representation. Districts are great because your representative is supposed to be beholden to your particular local needs, but it often leads to national legislatures that (by design or accident) don’t represent the political makeup of the nation as a whole, e.g. if every district has a 51% majority of Party A, then 100% of the delegates will be from that party.
Proportional representation solves this latter problem, but it means that politicians aren’t elected locally and it gives partisan elites and insiders a great deal of control over who gets those “extra” seats and in what priority.
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