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Electoral reform remains on the agenda. So do major questions about the reforms proposed by both the NDP and the Liberals. The reforms these parties have proposed appear to differ, at least to the degree that each party has fleshed out their reform pitches.

Each party’s proposed reforms leave some important questions unaswered. Some go to the heart of how decisions of major consequence for the functioning of our democracy should be made.

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(To get more clarity on the parties’ positions, I corresponded with Craig Scott, the NDP MP and democratic reform critic, and Robert Asselin, an advisor to Justin Trudeau.)

The NDP have proposed a “mixed member proportional” system. This represents a hybrid between a system with locally elected members and a pure proportional representational system.

The functioning of the system is straightforward. Voters cast one vote for a candidate in their constituency. The candidate who gets the most votes – even if it is not a majority – is elected. They also cast a second vote indicating which party (and its list of candidates) they prefer. The results determine the overall number of seats a party is awarded. If a party is entitled to more seats than the number of local members they’ve elected, their MPs are “topped up” with candidates from the list.