I've only gone and worked it ALL out!

[Optimistic Nick]

Intriguing.

As always, the Germans have it right. They have two votes: they vote once for their local representative, and once for the party that they want in power. Each party publishes lists of their candidates in order before the election, and the second vote is a proportional representation vote: they distribute 598 seats to the candidates on those lists in direct proportion to the votes the parties received on the second vote. Brilliant and simple.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Bundestag swahl2005_stimmzettel_small.jpg

[Observer]

There is a reason why Germany are miles ahead of us in everything that they do.

[bobh]

Intriguing.

That is so simple it's absolutely brilliant!

Intriguing.

Mine involved the local rep being the second house member, and the PR making up the upper house MPs

[Optimistic Nick]

Intriguing.

As always, the Germans have it right. They have two votes: they vote once for their local representative, and once for the party that they want in power. Each party publishes lists of their candidates in order before the election, and the second vote is a proportional representation vote: they distribute 598 seats to the candidates on those lists in direct proportion to the votes the parties received on the second vote. Brilliant and simple.

Seriously though, I really do not see why we can't have this in place. It maintains the importance of having a local MP (in fact it might improve the quality of the local MP as they are more likely to campaign on local issues), and it also means that we don't get the ridiculous situation we have currently where over 6m people have voted Lib Dem and UKIP and there are only 9 MPs representing them, whereas SNP got 1.5m votes but have over 50 seats. The referendum on PR was so ridiculous - it offered a really awful, complicated alternative system. Had we been offered what the Germans do, I'm sure each of us would have been making two crosses on our ballot paper yesterday.

Intriguing.

As always, the Germans have it right. They have two votes: they vote once for their local representative, and once for the party that they want in power. Each party publishes lists of their candidates in order before the election, and the second vote is a proportional representation vote: they distribute 598 seats to the candidates on those lists in direct proportion to the votes the parties received on the second vote. Brilliant and simple.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Bundestag swahl2005_stimmzettel_small.jpg

A total fudge, designed like that on purpose to get a no vote.