How does proportional representation work?

[Traveller]

@Bu Lai En

I like the idea of an MMP (like NZ or Germany) version of PR which gives the legislature a number of people proportioanl to their vote, but still allows people to have their personal choice in their electorate.

OK, at the risk of proving to everyone how cranky i am, i have a question over the practical working of PR - Proportional Representation.

If a party is voted for by 10% of the population, but only wins 5% of the seats directly, how do they acquire the other 5%. Are they allocated in reverse order of those seats they lost by the smallest margin ?

I am in favour of the concept of PR so that smaller, less wealthy parties can have their voices heard - unfortunately, this would also have to cover the extreme parties as well - and this has been the suggestion of the Liberal Party in UK for several years. But fail to see how this actually works when determining representatives to the elected body.

[Big_Fluffy_Matthew]

[quote=“Traveller”]If a party is voted for by 10% of the population, but only wins 5% of the seats directly, how do they acquire the other 5%. Are they allocated in reverse order of those seats they lost by the smallest margin ?[/quote]I’m guessing you vote for a party, not a particular person, and you don’t have a local representive.
The UK changed to a PR system for the EU Elections in 1999, each region has between 4 and 11 seats, and you vote for a party, if they get X% of the votes in a region they can choose X% of the MEPs, there’s a explanation of it here: electoral-reform.org.uk/publ … s/euro.htm