MMP At A Glance - 2

What about the other members, elected from party lists according to the parties' share of the vote? To whom would they be accountable? Wouldn't they just be appointed by party leaders, beholden only to them? And whom would the leaders appoint, but the sort of timeserving hacks willing to be so beholden? At the very least, would we not be creating two tiers of members?

Let's deal with the last concern first. You could as well say we had two tiers of members now, of course: those appointed to Cabinet -- by the party leader! -- with all the responsibilities of office, and those who remain mere "private" members. Yet each gets the same vote when it comes to legislation, and no one seems to have a problem with that.

But in fact, both list and riding members would be elected on largely the same basis: by party affiliation. Local representation is all very well, but it's not clear how significant it is even now. That's not how members are elected -- every study shows party is overwhelmingly the most important factor --and it's certainly not how they vote.

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Great article by Andrew Coyne, describing how MMP works and rebutting the myth that list members are "unelected" and "unaccountable".