Proportional representation means that the number of seats a party gets in parliament matches the number of votes it receives.
There are many ways to choose MPs. Some ways are more proportional and some are less proportional. A more proportional system means that if a party wins one-third of the votes, it should get about one-third of the seats in parliament.
Some systems are made to be more proportional. These include Party List Proportional Representation, the Single Transferable Vote, and the Additional Member System.
Other systems, like First Past the Post, the Alternative Vote, and the Supplementary Vote, sometimes give results that are close to proportional, but often they do not. These are called majoritarian systems, which means a party could get one-third of the votes but half the seats—or even none at all.
In proportional systems, there are different ways to vote. In some, you vote for a party. In others, you vote for individual candidates.
Instead of just one MP for an area, proportional systems usually let each area choose more than one representative. The area could be as big as the whole country or as small as a village. This means your team of MPs will show the different political opinions of people in your area.
Jonathan Reynolds MP spoke on behalf of the 6,000 who wrote to their MPs, the 500,000 who signed petitions and the tens of millions whose votes were wasted by First Past the Post.
A cross-party group of 74 MPs supported Caroline Lucas' motion to bring in a bill on proportional representation and extending the franchise in July 2016