I have mixed feelings about Proportional Representation, I'm worried it would lessen the "local candidate" element of the election. I like the concept of voting for a local representative from my area in Parliament, no matter their party affiliation.
Then again, I like the theory behind Ranked Ballots, but unfortunately in practice they tend to just funnel third party votes to the main parties, which is not right either.
I suppose we could go with PR/STV and triple the amount of representatives to still have some sort of local area representative scheme... but that could get expensive and unwieldy very quick.
Could we get rid of the Senate and have two houses? One house small riding FPTP for local area representation, and one house be party based PR by province?
I haven't, that's really interesting, slightly on the complicated side to sell to people though.
So you vote both for candidate and party seperately and then once all the candidates are put in seats, they add more representatives designated by the parties to balence the party representation?
Local representation is not great for passing laws, but it is amazing to get things fixed that got bound up in the bureaucracy. Like expedite a passport, or figure out why a pension didn't come. Having your MLA or MP speak for you often has a greater impact than going solo. And it nice that your repw usually has a local office in reasonable travel distance, if you want to speak to them in person.