Majority bonus system

Condorcet methods Positional voting Cardinal voting Quota-remainder methods Approval-based committees Fractional social choice Semi-proportional representation By ballot type Pathological response Strategic voting Paradoxes of majority rule Positive results A majority bonus system (MBS, also called a minority-friendly majoritarian system) is a mixed-member, partly-proportional electoral system that gives extra seats in a legislature to the party with a plurality or majority of seats.

A relatively small majority bonus (such as in the reinforced proportionality system of Greece) may not always guarantee that a single party can form a government.

[citation needed] The bonus system adds a certain fixed number of additional seats to the winning party or alliance.

The following table shows how small (10%), medium (25%) and large (50%) majority bonuses would work without any additional distortions of proportional systems.

As the table shows, especially with a high bonus/jackpot, the two methods lead to different result, with the bonus always providing a higher seat share.

The majority bonus system was adopted by other European countries, especially Greece in 2004, and France and Italy for regional and municipal elections.

Benito Mussolini was the first politician to enact a law to give automatic seats to the winning party and ensured his victory in the 1924 Italian general election.

A simple bonus system (left) is also called a fusion type of mixed system. It mixes the FPTP and PR formulas in the same district and tier. A majority jackpot (right) is a supermixed system with a conditional and compensatory element as well.