[EM] Mixed member proxy list

[Anthony O'Neal]

I think people in America and so many other places are attached to the SMD
system because they feel it provides them with a member of congress whom
they can always respond to.  People don't often realize that this is true to
the people who don't want that candidate in office.  The mixed member party
list system seemed like a good compromise - but I really dislike giving
parties so much power.

So, why not divide the country into a set of SMD's, and fill half of the
seats in the legislature through these.  Then use the voters desired proxy
(which may be the candidate they voted for, or another candidate, or a
non-candidate) to fill in the rest of the seats.  A voter who voted for the
winning candidate in an SMD contest has his vote consumed and that doesn't
count towards a declared proxies list.  The main difference between this and
the normal Mixed Member system is that there are many more options and two
proxies may have the same candidate on both of their lists, so it encourages
coalition building.

Preferrably proxies would be limited to filling up the other half of the
seats to candidates already declared in and had run but not won in
constitutencies.  Thresholds could be applied by saying that a proxy could
only use his votes on candidates that got above 5% of the vote - and you
could use higher thresholds than that, since there isn't the same
vote-splitting problem as there is in party list.

I'm split on whether or not organizations should be allowed to promote
candidates.  My main reason is that obviously the organizations that are
going to get the most votes are parties - and parties could discipline
candidates and hurt them simply by saying that they wouldn't be put high up
on the proxy list the next time around.  It also could simply fall into a
defacto party list system.

But overall, I believe this is an improvement on the mixed member party list
system that combines PR with local representation.

I also believe it would be very easy to implement STV with this.
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