As someone who has advocated for MMP before, I'm certainly glad to see folks starting to soften to the idea. Even just discussing it is a good start.
I do agree that maintaining some sort of provincial representation is worth doing, but that having provincial representation in both houses goes too far. If we wanted to move the Cosa to an MMP setup, then I would agree that implementing something like Sir Luc's idea would be a good change for the Senats.
Overhang seats can of course be a concern, but as Miestra and Sir Marcel have both already pointed out, there are methods to reduce these. Though I would prefer a fixed size to the Cosa, I don't mind the method where seats are added to negate overhang seats. Especially if we take the German method of excluding party list votes for successful independent voters, that likely minimizes the number of overhang seats anyway, so one every few elections isn't objectionable.
One thing I don't really support is the majority bonus or majority jackpot system; yes, not using them makes government formation and stability a bit harder, but that just means you might have to actually negotiate things on occasion. C'e la vidă.
One of the nice things about MMP, in my opinion, is that it seems to be fairly flexible in the details of how you choose to implement it. As an example, there is nothing preventing us from still electing the party seats via an open-list method, or from using ranked-choice voting for provincial seats.
I do agree that maintaining some sort of provincial representation is worth doing, but that having provincial representation in both houses goes too far. If we wanted to move the Cosa to an MMP setup, then I would agree that implementing something like Sir Luc's idea would be a good change for the Senats.
Overhang seats can of course be a concern, but as Miestra and Sir Marcel have both already pointed out, there are methods to reduce these. Though I would prefer a fixed size to the Cosa, I don't mind the method where seats are added to negate overhang seats. Especially if we take the German method of excluding party list votes for successful independent voters, that likely minimizes the number of overhang seats anyway, so one every few elections isn't objectionable.
One thing I don't really support is the majority bonus or majority jackpot system; yes, not using them makes government formation and stability a bit harder, but that just means you might have to actually negotiate things on occasion. C'e la vidă.
One of the nice things about MMP, in my opinion, is that it seems to be fairly flexible in the details of how you choose to implement it. As an example, there is nothing preventing us from still electing the party seats via an open-list method, or from using ranked-choice voting for provincial seats.


