They exist. Firefox and chromium are open source. Big companies pay their dev costs but they can be forked. Chromium is a descendent of WebKit which is a descendent of khtml from the KDE project. The engines have been open source for decades It’s the proprietary crap they put on top which is the problem.
That is how Tasmania has worked for over a century. They call it Hare-Clarke but it is a form of STV. They also use it in the Australian Capital Territory.
Mixed member might be more suitable nationally here. I have mixed feelings about the example in NZ. Anything is better than FPTP which should only be in history books. Even ranked choice/preferential with what you already have is an incremental improvement if that is all you can get.
It is a great idea. Strike while the iron is hot.
I didn’t realize Canada’s electoral system was so outdated. I assumed you would have a popularly elected upper house and if not proportional at least instant runoff/rcv/preferential for your lower house.
We didn’t want to give up local representation in Australia so we stuck with single member electorates but preferential voting. It is fairer to voters than FPTP but still results in a two party lower house that doesn’t reflect the actual percentages of votes cast for parties so the senate is more powerful that UK or Canada to offset. We could do a lot better. NZ follows a more German model that compensates popular parties that didn’t win seats. Not sure how I feel about that. The Greens would end up with 13% of lower house seats here instead of approximately 0 but chances are we could see parties like our own One Nation or the German AfD grow in influence as well. Tasmania has had proportional voting for their state lower house for over a century as does our capital territory.
Edit: the web site is very informative and and the fact checker addresses my extremist party fear well.
Good idea but also a gross oversimplification.
You can’t compare a parliamentary democracy with a presidential republic whatever the voting system. The president is an elected tyrant. It’s a miracle one hasn’t gone rogue previously.
A prime minister is a chairperson who only serves with the confidence of their party. In the UK and Australia PMs are routinely knifed by their own parties. Additionally the government needs to win confidence votes to govern.
Australia has a proportional upper house with some real teeth. They can bring a government down. But New Zealand has a unicameral proportional lower house. Optimised for different things. Many people say NZ is better but they haven’t had a big constitutional crisis so who knows. NZ only gets labour or national governments despite proportional representation.
The US is a narco-state. Always has been. Should tariff them until the Sackler family are serving life.