The election results this year are bad. Even if you voted for the national coalition, I think you should be angry about this year's results because they go against the point of MMP. I have two ideas of how to fix overhangs and make sure the government is always proportional, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
Idea 1, the simpler solution: Just add more list seats. Fill up all the electorate seats, then add list MPs until there are at least the base number of seats, and adding another seat would make it less proportional. Pros: It's simple, intuitive, and makes more sense than allowing overhangs. Cons: There could be a lot of MPs in the house.
Idea 2, STV + MMP: This idea uses STV or some other ranked system to elect the electorate MPs, which would be better than the FPTP we use for them now. But in this case, if an overhang happens, the overhang seat with the thinnest majority would be recalculated with the previous winner's votes transferred. Pros: it works in a better system for the electorates, and it makes for a consistent size of parliament. Cons: It's slightly more confusing for the voters, and calculating the seats could take much longer.
I don't see how STV is confusing for voters: you just rank the candidates in order of how much you like/hate them...
But the main issue is if we try to get STV, we'll more likely end up losing MMP entirely as people will vote for FPP in a referendumb...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_New_Zealand_voting_system_referendum
STV is commonly used in local council elections (but still a lot of FPP too), so it should be familiar to many voters.
I can't believe that referendum was 15 years ago! It seems more recent but perhaps I'm just remembering Luxon saying he wants another one.
True, i didn't realise it was that long ago, maybe people's perception of STV might have changed since then...