My MMP Review Submission

Should the 5% threshold be kept or changed? Why? If you recommend change, what should it be and why?:

The threshold should be lowered. Currently we accept that up to 4.99% of voters may have their votes discarded. This is undemocratic. I am in favour of the threshold being enough votes to achieve 1 list seat.

Should the one electorate seat threshold be kept or changed? Why? If you recommend change, what should it be and why?

If a party wins an electorate seat, this should have no effect on the threshold for the party vote. With the current 5% party vote threshold, If a party wins an electorate seat, and achieves 4% of the party vote, they should still receive only one seat. Any party vote threshold should always apply. This would discourage the sort of election engineering which happened with Act/National in Epsom. In the last election, the Conservatives received much more of the party vote than Act, but all conservative votes were discarded.

Proportion of electorate seats to list seats. Is this a problem, and what should be done to fix it?:

I see list seats being a problem when list members go against the party platform which saw them enter parliament.  Also, list MPs can be virtually guaranteed a place in parliament via list position, making them less accountable to the electorate. One idea I had was that “list seats” would be vested as proxy votes with the party leader, instead of becoming MPs. This would mean that all seats are electorate seats with proportionality of parties achieved by the party leaders potentially having more than one vote in parliament. In the case where a small party achieved enough party vote to enter parliament, but did not win an electorate seat, the party leader would enter parliament with a number of votes to match the share of  the party vote.