Parallel voting

Most often, parallel voting involves combining a winner-take-all system with party-list proportional representation (PR).

[1] While first-preference plurality with PR is the most common pairing in parallel voting, many other combinations are possible.

[2] Parallel voting is used in both national parliaments and local governments in Italy, Taiwan, Lithuania, Russia, Argentina, and other countries, making it among the world's most popular electoral systems.

[3] This sometimes leads to a hypercorrection that attempts to limit the term parallel voting to refer only to mixtures of first-past-the-post and proportional representation.

Parallel voting can use other systems besides FPP, and can have any mixture of winner-take-all, semi-proportional, and proportional components.

In addition, some mixed-member majoritarian systems are not parallel, in that they allow for interaction (limited compensation) between the two components, for example this is the case in South Korea and Mexico.

Those who favour majoritarian systems argue that supplementary seats allocated proportionally increases the chances that no party will receive a majority in an assembly, leading to minority or coalition governments.

It is also argued that parallel voting does not lead to the degree of fragmentation found in party systems under pure forms of proportional representation.

(Under MMP a gerrymander can help a local candidate, but it cannot raise a major party’s share of seats, while under AMS the effects of gerrymandering are reduced by the compensation) Japan, and subsequently Thailand and Russia adopted a parallel system to provide incentives for greater party cohesiveness.

[citation needed] Tactical voting by supporters of larger parties in favour of allied smaller parties close to a threshold, to help their entry to parliament are a possibility in any parallel, AMS or MMP system with an electoral threshold.

Parallel voting is currently used in the following countries:[6] The Philippines' electoral system for Congress is an exceptional case.

The commission came to the conclusion that parallel voting would be unable to overcome the shortcomings of New Zealand's previous SMP system.

An overwhelming majority of voters supported MMP, as recommended by the Royal Commission, and the system was adopted after the 1993 electoral referendum.