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I recently moved to Portland from New Zealand.  Their electoral system extends the franchise to all residents who have lived in the country legally for one year or more.  

They also use a mixed-member proportional electoral system, which gives people two votes in national elections: one for their local constituency representative and one for the party whose platform they support.  

People can choose to allocate their party vote to the same party as their constituency or to another party.  Since adopting this process, neither of the two main political parties has achieved an outright majority in Parliament.  As a result, they have formed coalitions that have given many minority voices access to the process of governing.

I think a system such as this would help reframe issues of local and state concern in ways that the current two-party system oversimplifies or neglects altogether.

posted 3 years, 10 months ago
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