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Tom Monto

PR Countries that do not have country-wide top-up

Updated: Mar 15

These countries are among the 108 or so on the world that use proportional representation.

As well, they not only use districts but also actually have no country-wide top-up members.


Portugal

Spain

Finland

Czechia (The Czech Republic)

Latvia

Croatia

Estonia

Switzerland

Poland

Belgium


Costa Rica


Brazil

Argentina

Chile


Tunisia.


This is interesting to me because if Canada gets PR at the federal level there can be no country-wide top-up - under the Constitution so many MPs are elected in Ontario, so many in Quebec, so many in BC, etc. so it seems to me that that means that votes cannot float across provincial or territorial boundaries.

The above countries shows that PR can work even if there is no country-wide top-up.

Despite the restriction against votes moving across prov. and terr. borders, The PR system that Canda can get would be great improvement over what we have now in erms of fairness and proportionality.

80 percent of the seats would be determined by votes just in four four provinces so despite constitutional requirement, there is still much leeway to hsve high district magnitude.

Even if STV is used and even if each large province is divided into district s of no more than 21 seats each, Ontario would have just five districts, Quebec 4, BC 2, AB 2 districts so still D, the arbiter of fairness, would be quite high. All other provinces could be just one prov-wide district - PEI with 4 MPs would be eminently suitable for prov-wide district.

But perhaps a desire for local representation would mean that districts wold be city -wide and elsewhere have just 3 seats in each district.


That is perfectly fine - even with that varying but generally-medium DM level, election results would be much more proportional than it is now when we use FPTP - even if Canada does not have country-wide top-up, same as is happening in the many PR countries that are listed above.


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(By contrast,

Denmark is a PR country that uses districts but also has country-wide top-up.


Netherlands uses only one district - a country-wide district where all the national -level legislators are elected in one contest.


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