Additional Member System - Criticisms

Criticisms

Since smaller parties are likely, in compensatory systems, to win a larger number of proportional seats, such additional member systems hand additional political power to the leaders of these parties at the expense of regional directly elected representatives, unless the additional members are elected on an open regional list or a closed regional list as in Scotland and Wales. With closed lists, party-list candidates may become puppets for the party leadership, or may add diversity to the party's elected members. The largest party in an election is likely to win a smaller number of proportional seats, so that governing parties may lose diversity, unless the members elected from the party list when it was in opposition then win local seats when the party gains enough support to form the government.

In the parallel systems, even the largest party will elect members from the party list, so the top list positions are guaranteed seats. This system is found in emerging democracies like post-communist Russia, where new national parties were evolving, and the voting system was intended to foster them, while allowing local independent members to win local seats, many of whom then joined the winning party. It retains the plurality principle but has another paper to allow voting for a party rather than a candidate.