I'm trying to design a voting system where smaller parties are represented but the country still uses local representatives. I don't want to allow coalitions since they dilute the party message into amorphous blob.
My idea is to have a country with unicameral parliament. The country is divided on electoral districts. Each party nominates candidates in every electoral district. The parliament seats are split among the parties according to how many votes they've got on a country level, but which candidate is chosen depends on a how well it did on a local level.
For example if there are 3 seats and 2 parties (A & B).
- A 80 votes B 20
- A 60 votes B 50
- A 55 votes B 45
A 195 / 300 * 3 ~ 2 seats B 105 / 300 * 3 ~ 1 seat
Party A will win seat No 1 & No 2 because it had a largest percentage at them 80% & 60%, B will win seat No 3, since it must receive a seat due to winning 35% of the votes and at seat No 3 it was relatively best.
The principle is same for multiple parties, each party receives seats according to the total number of the votes in the whole country, but their seats are distributed to their candidates that did relatively best in each district.
Will the smaller parties thrive under my voting system while people would still be able to have local representatives?
I assume that country is modern democracy.
Addition
The country uses separation of powers where parliament is only the legislative branch while president holds the executive power.
I'm open for election threshold of maximum 2%, 5% is way too much. Just for comparison Libertarian's Johnson won 3.2% while Green's Stein got 1% of the popular vote. Though theoretically there could be 25 parties each getting 2% I doubt that's what gonna happen.
I want small parties to have some voice and state funding, and occasionally be able to pass some laws when their votes are needed, but I want to avoid coalition governments like in Israel, Sweden etc.
Seat assignment process
Assuming there are 100 seats which should be distributed to 4 parties: A(60), B( 30), C(9) and D(1).
The process goes fallowing: 1. Assign seat to the candidate that won the most votes 2. Decrease number of seats to candidate's party by one 3. Remove parties whose remaning seats is zero 4. Repeat until all the seats are allocated
For example:
Assuming D's candidate from the 47th district received most votes
- Assign seat to party D's candidate from the 47th district
- Party D's remaining seats drops to zero
- Remove party D candidates from further consideration
Assuming party A candidate from the 12th district received most votes
- Assign seat to party A's candidate from the 12th district
- Party A's remaining seats decreases to 59
- Candidates from the parties A(59), B(30) & C(9) remain
....