test

If a real party uses dummy to win a majority of seats, it counts as a majority with overhang seats, no? Say a party splits into A and B. A contest districts only and B list only. So they do have stand down agreement and hence are pre-election allies. Since A receives no list votes all its district seats won are overhang seats. So if A and B combined wins a majority of seats with B having fewer list votes than all other parties over the threshold combined it will be a manufactured majority. By the way, I do not have definitive source for the 2001 Albanian election, but a quick look at the results on the Wikipedia page suggests that it was not MMM. My point about CDU/FDP (and Albania 2005) was that limiting attention to manufactured majority won by a single party or "pre-election alliance cooperating in the district races" with overhang seats may be too restrictive. I imagine there is a spectrum of how two or more parties can act to gain advantage from disproportionality in a not-fully-compensated, two-vote MMP system. On one end of the spectrum, all parties compete wholeheartedly in all the districts and for list votes, and voters genuinely weigh the parties' and candidates' credentials in voting (no cooperation). On the other end is that the parties in an alliance don't compete in the same local district, or even more efficiently, form a separate super dummy party to gain list votes. Then there are situations in between. Closer to the former end of the spectrum is, say, when a bigger party asking a friendly smaller party (list) voter to give his local vote to its local candidate, with the small party's tacit approval, because the small party local candidate has no chance to win, with the off chance that the bigger party might win overhang seats. One step closer to latter end of the spectrum would be the two friendly parties doing some wink wink, nod nod at some level, ostensibly for more dignified reasons like to pull a small ally over the threshold, but in reality to win overhang seats, even though they officially compete; and so on. I mentioned CDU/FDP because in 2009, more than a third of FDP (list) voters voted for other parties, and CDU/CSU won a record number of overhang seats. Of course they did not matter in the end, but a scenario where they do was hardly unlikely (until Karlsruhe intervened). I would favor full compensation for MMP, because I'd think it would discourage the use of party cooperation, intentional or otherwise, to milk advantage from disproportionality; but the possibility of an infinitely sized legislature disturbs me more. Sorry if this post still doesn't make sense or isn't relevant. My ADD brain is telling me to erase this draft so I have to click post comment now.

i'm gay

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