Mixed Member Proportional (MMP)

Electing local and regional MPs with proportional results

Mixed Member Proportional

Mixed Member Proportional representation was recommended by the Law Commission of Canada (2004) and several provincial commissions. Variations of MMP are used in New Zealand, Germany, Scotland and Wales.

Read the MMP part of our submission to the federal Electoral Reform Committee.

How it Works

About 60% of the MPs will be local riding MPs elected by winner-take-all as we do today. About 40% of the MPs will be elected as regional MLAs, with your regional vote.

You will have two votes. One vote helps elect a local MP. The other vote helps elect regional MPs from your region.

Your vote for a regional candidate is also called the “party vote.” A vote for a regional candidate also counts as a vote for that party. The party vote determines what proportion of the seats each party should have in each region.

If voters for a party are entitled to elect a regional MP, it will be the party’s regional candidate who got the most votes across the region. These are also called “top up seats”.

Voting is simple. Put an X beside one Local MP and one Regional MP.

With MMP, local ridings become about 67% bigger to accommodate the regional seats without requiring any more MPs.

There are excellent videos on MMP on our youtube channel in the systems playlist. To get the basic idea of how the ballots are counted, we recommend this video: