ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Dual-member proportional representation

Imagine you have a big bowl of candy and you want to share it with your friends. However, you want to make sure that everyone gets their fair share of candy. Dual-member proportional representation works in a similar way to this.

When we have an election, people vote for which political party they want to represent them in government. With dual-member proportional representation, each person gets two votes, one for a local representative and one for a party.

The local representatives are chosen based on who gets the most votes in their area, just like in a regular election. However, the party votes are used to make sure that each party gets a fair share of representation in government.

Here's an example: Imagine there are 10 seats in government to be filled. If one party gets 30% of the party votes, they would get 3 seats in government. Then, they can choose which representatives from their party will fill those seats.

This helps to make sure that the government is made up of representatives from different parties and that everyone has a voice in decision-making. It also helps to make sure that smaller parties are not left out of government entirely.

So, dual-member proportional representation is like sharing candy so that everyone gets a fair amount, but instead of candy, we're sharing political representation in government.