>> What democratic countries other than the UK, US and Canada
>> can representatives get elected with less than a majority of
>> the votes cast?

> This effect is inherent in any form of partitioned and/or indirect
> election,

Probably better put "in many or most ..."

You can have a partitioned el;ection (such as in NZ) where the 
partitioning is done on a fully proportional basis. Ours is called MMP 
fwiw. People vote both for indicvidual candidates and also for 
parties. Half the seats are filled by local candidates. The other half 
are "topped up" to bring the overall proportion to the ratios set by 
the party vote.

An arguably fairer system is the STV (single transferable vote) system 
where votes for candidates that fail to meet some lower (undemocratic) 
threshold are able to be transferred to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, ... choices of 
the voter's choosing. Australia has this system I believe. seems about 
as fair as one could hope for. Most unusual considering :-).



        RM

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