[pousada]

IMO the 5% rule is pretty good.

Otherwise we would have loonies like the Grey Panthers (old people party), the “Spiritual Party”, or the extreme right-wing “Republicans” (AFD is moderate compared to those) being able to vote on laws etc.

Of course that also cuts out some parties that I have supported in the past, but the system allows a lot of parties to participate that aren’t _that_ populist (e.g. the Greens, the Left, the Pirates (I think they managed to get a seat or two in the past))

Of course it’s not perfect, but I still think it’s one of the best flawed systems we came up with so far. We should keep iterating on it but very slowly and carefully.

[rsp1984]

The obvious problem with the 5% rule is that voters who don't like any of the established parties are faced with the decision between voting for something they don't like or most likely throwing away their vote.

As someone who writes algorithms for a living I can think of ~ 100 ways to resolve this bug without limiting the original intent. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to come up with one. However the fact that this %5 rule hasn't been changed tells you everything you need to know about the legislators.

[Timwi]

I would consider a world in which loonies have a couple insignificant seats in parliament to be a more democratic system than one that shuts them out.

[pousada]

It doesn’t shut them out though, they can still effect change on smaller scale - for example smaller regional and state governments. They don’t need to sit in the nation wide parliament and add noise. The rule also encourages cooperation and compromise which is arguably also more democratic than everyone staying in their more extreme position