While this site is not promoting proportional representation directly, choice voting can work with proportional representation, and there are three variations of it described below. For those who support proportional representation, basic choice voting can work as a transitionary stage until full PR is implemented in one of the following forms:
Fair Choice Voting or Council Choice.
This is also known as the transferable vote and is used in Ireland, Malta, Tasmania and in local elections in Scotland. If there were 5 seats in a district, voters would rank candidates and pool their votes. (last placed candidates are dropped and if a candidate gets elected, partial votes are transferred to their next choice) In the end, the top 5 candidates would be elected proportionally. This work well for city councils, and can work for other levels of government, but voters would move from local representatives to regional representatives.
Choice Voting with Party Parity:
This is similar to the mixed member proportional system used in Germany and a version called "alternative vote plus" was recently proposed in England by the Jenkins Commission. Voters would use a choice voting ballot for local candidates and also mark a party. Parties would be given extra seats to make up for differences between their vote count and their seat count.
Choice plus PR. (Australian Choice Voting):
This is a parallel system where one set of seats are elected using choice voting and another set of at-large seats are distributed using PR. This is used in Australia where they have their lower house using choice voting and their senate is elected via proportional representation. In Canada, this could work the same way, if the house of commons was elected using choice voting, and the senate could be elected using proportional representation.
