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The faults of first past the post, the subject of my last two columns, are mirrored in the virtues of the systems that would replace it.

There are any number of alternatives, but broadly speaking they break into two types: proportional, where a party’s share of the seats in Parliament hews closer to its share of the popular vote; and preferential, where voters, rather than simply marking an x beside their choice, rank them in order.

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Some proportional systems are also preferential, but a preferential ballot on its own does not imply proportionality. Like first past the post, it’s still a “winner take all” system, only the winning candidate must get a majority of the vote, rather than a mere plurality. Usually this is achieved by combining first choices with the second and third choices of voters of other candidates.

What makes a system proportional is the use, in place of single-member ridings, of multi-member districts: thus, in a district with five members, a party winning 20 per cent of the vote would elect one member, while a party with 40 per cent would get two, and so on — in contrast with first past the post, where only the first-place candidate in a riding is elected, though he might have received 30 per cent of the vote or less.