I actually like the new draft of the electoral system. They did away with the insane 8% threshold, introduced a share of preferential voting and gender parity, and increased the immediate majority threshold to 40%, which is respectable.
Could you or somebody else please explain the new proposal in some detail?
The voters cast their vote for a party list in a 5 or 6-member constituency. However, the votes are tallied at the national level. If the party that comes ahead has received more than 40% of the vote, this party gets 52% of the seats. The remaining 48% of seats is assigned proportionally to all the parties that have received more than 3% of the vote. If no party has cleared the 40% threshold, a runoff is held between the top two parties - and the winner takes the 52% seats bloc. Then among each parties seats are distributed between constituencies. Voters may express two individual preferences on the party list they have voted for (one for a man and one for a woman). The list leader selected by the party remains ahead no matter what, but the other candidates are ordered by the number of their preferences. Also, lists must alternated between genders, so that if the list leader is a man, the second must be a woman, and reciprocally.
That's...amazingly contorted and difficult to explain but I think I understand the reasoning behind it, and I'd say it's preferable to the other ideas that were being thrown around a while back. Thanks.
I might not have done a good job at explaining it. I'm a huge nerd for voting systems, so I might take for granted things that are pretty obscure to normal people. 
Is that similar to the Italian municipal elections system?
