As steamy says, constituency are part of it. On population terms scotland is clearly over represented in the UK parliment. You could say people in a lower population constituency votes are worth more. i presume the various forms of PR try to address this.?

Posted By: jamesingrammy point re ukip was more directed to our political system than any particular person or party
fptp makes a lot of people feel unrepresented.

Ah, yes, agreed. Thanks for the clarification.

Posted By: jamesingramYou could say people in a lower population constituency votes are worth more. i presume the various forms of PR try to address this.?

Usually, yes, as the constituencies are larger it's easier to make them more uniform and/or have a proportionate numbers of representatives.

Election 2015: What difference would proportional representation have made?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32601281
laid out nicely

Posted By: Ed DaviesBut does any country or government in the world use a proportional representation scheme anything like you seem to be imagining? Never heard of one where representatives are shuffled around to represent different areas.

lol- I guess I have never thought about it properly - what you say makes more sense, but the idea that I had would be much more fun :)

I guess then in effect in PR you would vote for MPs for "counties" , say 10 MPs each and you get one MP for each 10% of the vote - is that the kind of effect ?

The problem I guess is that you would lose your connection with a "local" MP - assuming MPs care about their locality any more...

-Steve

Here we have a mix of PR and FPTP. The local MP is voted on a first past the post system and on the ballot paper you also have the choice to vote for a party (the PR bit). The party votes are apportioned according to the %age of party votes received. There are about 90 party seats so say UKIP with 12%(?) of party votes would get 12% of the 90. This also means that the senior part members are guaranteed a seat e.g Ed Balls would have a party seat and wound not have stood as a constituency MP
Of course there is no requirement for people to give their party vote to the same party as represented by the local MP.

The system means that (subject to a national minimum) minority parties can get an MP even if they don't win a constituency seat.

Under this system the last 2 elections have produced a government with a majority in excess of 66% (important because constitutional changes need a 66% majority) but this was due to the performance of the previous socialist (ex-communist) government.

PR can mean any of a huge range of possible systems.

Scotland works on the same sort of system that PiH describes for Hungary. Roughly half the MSPs are directly elected by constituencies (FPTP I think; don't remember it being AV/STV or anything but it might be). The remainder are elected from party lists on a regional proportional representation basis.

As PiH mentions, you don't have to vote for the same party. In the one such election I've voted in I voted for the local SNP candidate because he had pretty good green policies and the Greens hadn't put up a candidate in my constituency. For the region I voted for the Greens. As it happened the local SNP candidate and the first on the Green's party list a) were partners and b) both got in.

We don't have one, do we? At least not in the traditional sense

And when you do have one, the party in charge seems to spend a disproportionate amount of effort to change it...

Posted By: owlmanLooking at that, it appears under PR, it's highly unlikely that one single party would ever again get an overall majority. Certainly fairer to fringe opinions of any colour, and most likely a better, wider, more informed debate. Downside, inertia maybe, more horse-trading. Couple it with a revised second chamber and you may have something more fitting for the 21st C..
Could you mix all that with a federal system??

That depends on the design of the PR system. If you had a PR system whereby the party with most votes is given a working majority say 60% then the remaining 40% of seats are divided on a PR basis you are then guaranteed a position of power to carry out your election mandate.

Posted By: orangemannotWe also got an "R" plate (LIMITED TO 45MPH FOR THE FIRST 12 MONTHS) system for novice drivers, that appears to be unknown to the rest of the UK.

And that is a good thing? Does it not just cause an ill tempered queue.
Mind you, we have caravans that have the same effect.

How we vote our MEP's in isn't it?

Posted By: orangemannotYawn, very loudly, anyone in the UK, other than the residents on NI, care to guess which part of the UK already uses the De Hondt system of voting, for all other than the UK Westminister elections?

Isn't it also used in England, Scotland & Wales, for MEPs. and in Scotland for the "list" MSPs. Possibly also the Welsh Assembly?

Electoral reform is desperately needed. But I rather suspect that trying to get it out of a majority Tory government which got its majority through the lack of electoral reform might not be the best use of anybody's time. Signed anyway.

Works OK for Germany.

Posted By: SteamyTeaWhenever we have an election, there is always talk of PR and electoral reform.

And after the last election we all got to vote on it. Things could have been different, but "the people spoke" & said "no thanks" (by ~2:1 among the 42% who bothered to vote)...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum,_2011

I think rather than disagreement, compromise is what could happen
Thats how we all function on a daily basis.Those that don't end up isolated.

Germany (and many others) seems to be doing quite well so Im guessing PR hasn't lead to the chaos those doubters usually site.
But yes the winners never want to change the rules if those the ones they won by :->

If you had a petition with say 10 million signatures on it does anyone think that might have an effect?

I just can't see, without compulsory voting, with strict penalties for not voting, how PR will help.

Not overly convinced by any of your sentences but this one is really weird. Obviously some people aren't interested and there really doesn't seem to be any point in making them vote. Still, when people feel their vote is going to matter there's usually a high turn out (e.g, the Scottish referendum) so some form of PR will likely increase the turn out. Whatever, I don't see why any form of PR is in any way undermined by people who don't vote, certainly no more than with FPTP or AV or whatever (one dis-proportionate representative per constituency)