In Ireland (both Ireland and Northern Ireland), voting is done by Single Transferable Vote (STV). It's an interesting system that gets closer to proportional r

In Ireland (both Ireland and Northern Ireland), voting is done by Single Transferable Vote (STV). It's an interesting system that gets closer to proportional representation while still meaning that you're voting for candidates. Basically, you have multi-seat constituencies. So, you live in Place X and there are, say, 12 people running for 3 positions. You rank the candidates in order of your preference (like AV). Then you have a point that the candidates have to pass - the number of votes divided by the number of seats + 1 (#votes/(seats in constituency + 1); hope that disambiguates my language). Votes get redistributed somewhat like AV. It's a tad hard for me to explain since it seems a bit intuitively obvious to me. Wikipedia has an example that does a decent job: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#An_example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#An_exa.... As you see, excess votes get redistributed from candidates who got past the quota without any transfers to the second choice candidates (in proportion to the second choices of people who voted that person as their first choice). Then you see if anyone has reached the quota and if one or more have, any excess votes they received are distributed to their next highest choice; if no one has then the person with the least votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed and you continue on. It doesn't exactly get you proportional representation, but it gets closer than AV or FPTP while still allowing you to vote for individual people rather than party lists and it allows you to legitimately have representatives for your region while maintaining decent proportionality. I really think it's a nice system. I like the idea of having regional representation - so that you have your (Congresspeople|TDs|MPs). I like the idea of being able to vote for minority parties. I like the idea of those minority parties being able to get close to proportional representation. STV seems like a nice compromise there. You get to have your representatives for your area bringing local views, you get to vote for people, and you get closer to proportional representation than AV and FPTP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote