A simple form of PR - MMP
Each voter having one vote, and the vote to be marked with ranked preferences for one or more of the candidates running in local district.
Voter's marked back-up preferences to be used, if possible, when ballot would otherwise be wasted.
Use of multi-member districts where possible.
City-wide districts of 2 to 11 seats each, in each city that already has 3 to 12 MPs, but allocating one seat less than old number of MPs
where city already has more than 12 MPs, districts covering portions of cities district having 5 to 11 seats each, but with one less MP in the district than previously in the area covered by the district.
one- or two-seat districts elsewhere (by combining present ridings), with no "grouped" district being larger than the current largest district in the province. (if one MP in the province can represent that size area, then surely two should be able to.)
Provincial-level top-up
top-up is an added complication but top-up seats are important part of MMP, which NDP promises and which many in Canada want.
(The multi-member districts by themselves would provide massively more fair election results than the present First past the post)
Votes can not cross provincial boundaries due to constitutional restrictions so each province would have its own top-up.
There would be as many top-up seats in each province as provided by the "takeback" in the cities in that province -- one freed up per each city-wide district and one per each city district, if any.
They would be filled by electing the most-popular unelected candidates in the province belonging to any party that does not win as large a share of the district seats as its share of the district vote.
The top-up elections would be based on the party label of the candidate marked as first preference by voters in the district contests.
Top-up seats would go to parties that have largest discrepancy between percentage of district vote share and its seat share, specifically to the unelected candidate of the party that received the most votes.
(There may be not enough top-up seats to bring all parties up to their due share of the seats, but overall fairness would be much better than under present first past the post.
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I have used the term MMP to define my system so that NDP can fulfill their promise to bring in MMP if they were to bring it.
But yes my simple plan could be seen as a form of Rural-Urban PR.
Rural-Urban PR is a form of MMP but unfortunately is not called that.
difference between "my simple plan" and R-UPR is:
mine has two-seat districts in some places outside cities
that makes it different.
as well, note that R-UPR and mine both are different from usual MMP that people think of, the system used in NZ.
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(I should have mentioned that boundaries of counties should be adopted as district boundaries outside cities where possible,
instead of just lumping each two ridings together, which would layer a new layer of arbitrary-ness on the already-arbitrary ridings.
some ridings would have to be re-done anyway as a city with three MPs has been shifted off to make its own MMD of 2 seats. I think some ridings do overlap city corporate boundaries., which would stop in cases of cities currently with 3 or more MPs,
(or if you go by average riding population, any city with population greater than 340,000 would be hived off to make its own MMD
(114,000 being average population of a riding in provinces)
But now, I am thinking that average population per riding could be calculated differently if it is based on just district seats, anyway, once "takeback seats" are extracted from MMDs.
so even my simple plan is suddenly a full redrawing of just about every riding in Canada
not so simple...
Perhaps a city would mathematically have to have at least 220,000 to allow three seats to go down to 2, or some current number of MPs to go down by 1 (or 1 in each district)
Only 18 cities in all of Canada have pop of more than 220,000!
So that is a problem with the idea to simply free up seats by taking them out of new city MMDs.
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About what we think of when we think of MMP
R-UPR and my "simple plan" both are different from usual MMP that people think of, the system used in NZ.
my research tells me that actually only NZ and Lesotho in all the world uses MMP that includes single-member districts and FPTP.
MMP
9 countries use form of MMP
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5 have MMP using MMDs (district-level list PR/overall party list PR)
Denmark Iceland Sweden South Africa Germany
South Africa -- the National Assembly consists of 400 members elected by MMP using closed list proportional representation.
200 are elected from provincial party lists in each of the nine provinces.
national allocation of seats is calculated based on party share of votes and the total 400 seats.
after that, 200 national list seats are allocated to the parties by subtracting seats won at the provincial level for each party from that party's national allocation, generating a proportional result.
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2 have MMP (district-level FPTP/party-list PR)
NZ, Lesotho
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2 use "Other MMP" (districts use systems other than FPTP, list PR/party-list PR)
These are :
MMP with MMDs and Block Voting
Mauritius
the small Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius uses MMP, with most being elected through block voting in multi-member districts and 8 declared elected in top-up fashion for majority party (if it does not have majority of seats) and/or ethnic representation from the "best losers".
MMP with SMDs and FPTP but sometimes no district winner
Romania
Romania -- In Romania, the 2008 national legislative elections were held under a mixed single vote system where SMD seats were only awarded to individual winners with an absolute majority.(there is no attempt to manufacture district majority winners. either it happens or it does not. (when it does not, no local member is elected apparently)
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for more info on variety of PR used in world, see
Montopedia blog
Most countries in world use PR. They use variety of electoral systems (montopedia.wixsite.com)
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