Additional Member System (AMS) – The Basics

Additional Member System (AMS)

Also known as Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), AMS is used to elect the Welsh Assembly as well as more prominent parliaments such as the German Bundestag. A mixture between FPTP and PR designed to give the voter more choice in direct representation by candidate, but also to proportionally represent the complete population of a nation or state in matters that affect its whole population.

Advantages:

·      Ensures proportional representation of a nation’s citizens while simultaneously giving the voter a representative that is directly accountable. This ensures that the concerns of a constituency are firmly addressed while equally addressing issues of a national or supranational scale.

·      Easier for coalitions to form because a voter has at least 1 vote, used to express desire of local and national leadership. I.e. First vote can be for Candidate A, second vote for Party B.

Disadvantages:

·      Can create ‘overhang’ seats whereby a party may have more representatives in a parliament than it is entitled to due to the first –FPTP- vote, even though it has less second –PR- votes which may misbalance a parliament.

·      Much more difficult to understand without education and thus can only work if people educate themselves and/or the government educates the voters, such as in Germany.

Be sure to check out related links such as:

First Past The Post (Fptp) – The BasicsProportional Representation (Pr) – The BasicsVoting Behaviour – United Kingdom