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Tag: MMP

Report: “Understanding How Proportional Representation Might Work in New York City”

John Ketcham and I have a new report out today with the Manhattan Institute. In it, we show that the effective number of electoral parties at the last New York City council election was 3.3. We defend this computation by reference to the seat-product model. Then we simulate two forms of proportional representation: open-list at the borough level, mixed-member PR with a citywide compensation tier of 20 seats.

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Teaching comparative electoral systems with a U.S. example

Would you like a more engaging way to teach students about electoral systems? The answer might be “yes” if you’ve been doing it with lecture slides. Compensation seats? Here’s a table of results from New Zealand. D’Hondt versus Sainte-Laguë divisors? Here’s the Belgian Parliament with either.

What if the lesson used an example students cared about? What if it were interactive?

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Minority-party representation (MPR) to fix gerrymandering

We recommended open-list proportional representation (OLPR) in the 2023 APSA report because we reasoned that MMP was not viable. MMP stands for “mixed-member PR,” a form of proportional representation that includes single-seat districts (SSD). Here is the rationale behind our recommendation, some potential objections to that advice, and a way to resuscitate something like MMP. I will call it minority-party representation (MPR).

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