Future voting

Alan Pollock’s suggestions on the formation of future governments in an MMP environment are well made (Letters, October 18). However, the party given the first opportunity to form a government needs to be the party which the majority would prefer more than any other party.

To determine that, our MMP system needs to incorporate preferential voting. This would require voters to rank the parties. First preferences would continue to be used to determine the proportion of MPs each party would have in Parliament but – if no party has a 50 per cent majority – the number of parties would be progressively reduced until a majority was achieved and a clear preference identified.

Preferential voting should also be used to select all the electorate MPs. RUSSELL MORRISON Paremata