Excellent question, Anthony.
Let me first mention that the voting system is still winner-take-all, but next it is fixed up in a proportional manner. As such it is a mixed voting system that ends up honoring all voters (except for that 5% threshold also in place).
The 40 senator districts deliver 40 senators to the seats. They are the winners in the districts. In this American-German system, they would be the plurality winners because voters start voting now for whoever they want and they are no longer calculating anymore who has the best chance to win. That means many voters won't go for candidate #1 or #2 as they do now, but can also go for #3 or #4. Of course, #1 wins, but he or she does not need 50% of the votes anymore, just the plurality (aka first-past-the-post).
Then, looking at all the votes that everyone cast in all 40 districts, it is seen that ten percent of the voters voted for the Green Party.
* If the Green Party won no districts, then the calculations are such that ten percent of the seats will go to the Green Party. That means 4 seats are added to the 40 already in place.
* In reality, it is likely that the Green Party ends up winning one or two districts now that the voters are liberated from the restricting voting mechanism. They will feel freer to vote what they want, and low and behold they are not the only ones. So let's say one district ended up voting for the Green Party coming out on top. Then only 3 seats are added, because they already have one, making 4 in total.
As you can see, the calculations are best approximations. So 4 out of 43 is not exactly ten percent. But the demand is to get this number based on the actual voters as closely reflected as reasonably possible in the Senate. I won’t be doing the math — I’ll leave that to the specialists.
* Let's discuss the Orange Party, a spin-off Republican Party, who did not make it to the threshold of 5 percent in this example. Of all voters in California combined, only 2.5 percent voted for the Orange Party. Too bad for them — they are not getting a seat added because they fell short of the 5% threshold.
However, if they came out on top in one district, they would still get that seat. So, the threshold is only put in place when reviewing all votes in California combined and not per each voting district.
Anthony, in reality the voting mechanism is a little more complex, and I wish Germany (and New Zealand) would clean up its system so it is based on a single vote. Right now, the voters are asked to vote twice, once for a person and once for a party. I find that unnecessary and a single vote as described would do more or less the exact same thing.
Let me say once more: Gerrymandaring is out (Hooray!) because it doesn't matter anymore if in a district a Republican wins or not because the number of Republican voters remains the same for the whole of California, and that percentage will be expressed in the whole senate. Same for Democrats; they will get that percentage of seats reflecting the percentage they got from the voters. No more gaming the system therefore. It becomes far more fair and square.
Gerrymandering can still take place, for instance, if a group in control of fixing up the districts wants to make sure their representative of a district is a Republican (or a Democrat). But there is then no numeral advantage anymore in the Senate itself. No more gaming the system because the system got fixed.
As I see it, Democrats and Republicans would still be the main parties, but their ‘dual dictatorship days’ are then over.
Thank you for that question. I like the German system a little better than the New Zealand system, but both are decent mixes of the two voting systems. Here you can see what the Kiwis do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_New_Zealand
