Parallel voting describes a mixed voting system where voters in effect participate in two separate elections for a single chamber using different systems, and where the results in one election have little or no impact on the results of the other. Specifically, it usually refers to the semi-proportional system used in Japan, South Korea, some regions of Russia and elsewhere, sometimes known as the Supplementary Member system or, by some political scientists, Mixed Member Majoritarian (MMM), which combines first-past-the-post voting with party-list proportional representation. Parallel voting or MMM is distinct from mixed member proportional representation where there is one election, and the party vote determines what share of seats each party will receive in the legislature.
However, if the couple FPTP-PR is the most common pairing in parallel systems, any other combination is effectively possible. For example, in Italy and France, regional elections are held under a parallel system where a group of councillors are chosen by a party-list system, and the remaining part with a general ticket, so to ensure that a single list wins well over half the seats.
Read more about Parallel Voting: Procedure, Advantages and Disadvantages, Use
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“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.”
—Tom Stoppard (b. 1937)