What if it was just a straight majority vote, with no districts at all? Wouldn’t that be the best way to get a direct sample of the public opinion?

My big problem with proportional representation? Parties don’t sit in the big chair, day after day, listening to arguments, doing work and making hard decisions. People do. If I’m just voting for a party, what guarantee do I have that the person the party bosses pick to fill the seat will be even remotely competent and honest?

That said, I can see such a system working ok if rearranged along the lines of a board of directors. Each party sends a single representative to a grand council. Each council member gets X number of votes according to the number of votes his/her party got in the election, with some decisions possible with a majority of council members (regardless of votes exercised). Votes are limited to Executive (including Chief Executive) and Judicial appointments, inquiries and impeachments as well as major decisions like budgets and wars.

Darin: that’s called proportional representation.

Not sure if the example you give under “propotional representation” will necessarily lead to a tyranny of the minority. Remember, the coalition’s leading party represents a minority too – just a bigger minority. In theory, the policies that will be voted for in the legislative assembly will be ones that both the leading party and the “kingmaker” can get behind. But there are situations where “coalition” in the traditional sense does not even have to be formally created.

Canada is an interesting example at the moment that kind of belies the examples given in this post. It’s a “first-past-the-post” system (ie single candidate district) that is in a minority government situation now. But no coalition. All three opposition parties (the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois) are in opposition. But the ruling Conservatives have been able to exploit a situation where the main “traditional” opposition (the former governing party) is still weak, having chosen an unpopular leader and still feeling the effects of the scandal that hurt it badly in the last general election. It is a weird situation, created by having more than two strong parties and strong regional differences. This editorial provides an analysis:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/03/27/the-post-editorial-board-st-233-phane-dion-has-given-harper-a-minority-with-majority-power.aspx …

“...The current situation in the House of Commons — highlighted by this week’s Canwest News Service analysis of voting patterns by the various parties — must be largely without precedent in Canadian history. For all intents and purposes, the largest opposition party on the floor of the House has ceased to exist. ...
... A lot of pundits have been heard saying during the life of this government that Canadians like the idea of a Conservative ministry with a minority in the House as the best of all possible worlds. What we’ve ended up with, though, is a minority with majority power. In some closely-contested constituencies, at least a few of the voters must be thinking they might as well get the benefit of representation on the government side if there is going to be no brake on Tory executive power anyway.”

I think simplicity and fitness for leadership are much more important than fairness as a selecting process. It becomes a question of why we are holding elections: To select the best leadership through a competitive process that includes checks and balances on that leadership? Or to select the lowest common denominator, where the electorate disagrees about the candidate least but is also least concerned with their skills. It seems to me that systems set up to maximize fairness, rather than maximize the quality of the officials in administering the business of the citizenry, are a surefire way to set up a bidding market to see how can beat whom in a race to the bottom.