Do we all vote then out of, say, 500 seats they give out the relevant percentage to each party? 30% Labour, 30% Cons, 20% Lib, 5% Monster Raving Looney etc.

Does that mean we get minority parties like Greens and BNP getting seats?

And do you actually end up with an MP for your constituency? Or just a name on a list, maybe someone who has never been to the area and doesn't know it's issues and problems?

i prefer the idea of the single transferable vote

There are several different systems – wiki will probs explain it.

Or just a name on a list, maybe someone who has never been to the area and doesn't know it's issues and problems?

Bingo. And I don't mean Hora's dog.

We have it here in Spain: all the parties make a list, one for each Autonomous Community, at best maybe the top 3 or 4 are well known. You vote for a list. The votes are counted up, divided between the parties, and divided proportionally.

A better system (IMHO) would be either STV, or a combination of the current MP elections with a fully proportional second house.

There are a series of different ways of doing it. All rather complex. yes minority parties get a chance of representation. Depending on the type of PR you get a threshold below which you get no representation. You can retain a link to constituencies if you want to – this tends to mean less proportionality tho.

In scotland we have two systems. For Holyrood its an additional member system. You get two votes – one for constituency which elects around half the MSPs and the other for a list which is used to top up the parties representation so if they get 40% of the list votes but only 20% of the constituency seats then the list is used to top up. The lists are also regional. This means its a fairly high threshold to get representation – but still a couple of greens and a couple of others got in.

For the council we have multi member constituencies. Each constituency elects 3 or 4 representatives This gives a proportional element but a very high threshold. Edinburgh city council has a green or two on it tho.

Neither system is perfect and there are other systems around. I am a bit of an political geek and I am not 100% sure I have this explanation right. There has also been some fiddling with the scottish systems – previous holyrood elections used a slightly different system which had a lower threshold to get representation – so there were more greens and SSP and so on.

Beyond this you get into serious election geekery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation

Whoa, try explaining that on Twitter or Facebook…….

Grew up with it in Ireland….**** nightmare trying to explain it.

It doesn't, cos Politicians get in.

Or just a name on a list, maybe someone who has never been to the area and doesn't know it's issues and problems

Well the thing is that your MP doesn't necessarily do things for your area anyway. The UK system is a bit of a mix-up because it tries to do two things with one system. One is the formation of a government based on political ideals and the majority of the electorate's wishes; the other is representation of ordinary people in a particular area. The two things are not really compatible. For instance, we in Leominster had a Tory MP for ages – he was apparently good at getting issues raised and did good things for the town, but he was a Tory and we didn't agree with Tory ideaology but voting for him made a Tory govt more likely.. So what do you do?

Plus our system allows a government to be elected to power when the majority of people do not support it.

PR is meant (I believe) to address some of these issues, but it is a concept rather than a particular process.

Personally I would rather have you vote for a non-party affiliated MP, and another nation-wide vote for a government.

Molgrips – if 50% of people don't even vote then even with PR surely you aren't getting a government that the majority support?

One criticism that the big (ok, 2) parties level at PR is that your not voting for your local representative. But that argument's a little disingenuous, since people *generally* vote for the party (or have the possible dilemma, as in molgrips case, that you *do* have a good local MP whose party alignment is at odds with your preferred party voting intent)

>Does that mean we get minority parties like Greens and BNP getting seats?

Well that *does* reflect the makeup of views within the country, whether you like it or not (And as a potential Green voter, so I'd be more than happy to see some different views in Westminster..)

Molgrips – if 50% of people don't even vote then even with PR surely you aren't getting a government that the majority support?

You'd still get the majority support of the voters tho rather than electorate. Oh and I'd have none of the above/RON on the ballot too. That's a no brainer to me.

Oh and another problem with our system – people won't vote X cos they wont get in. A massive problem for lib dems I think. A questionnaire 2 elections ago based on questions abotu manifesto points revealed that something like 65% of people agreed with lib dem policies, but they got what 20% of the vote?

aahhh just another reminder that i should be revising for my politics A level..

but yes… look up the "Jenkins report", BBC did a good summary on it and it essentially was the first report looking at PR for the UK