I've been trying to put to words what I feel about preferential vs some kind of PR system...

To me, the way I see the influences of parties happening, I can live with a bunch "loose" or "pickup" MPs that weren't elected in a riding, just to add balance in views to match the country on a whole. The way those members are handled is definitely up to debate, though.

I like how Germany's approach (I think) where you cast a vote for your local representative and then one for a party. That way even if you like your local MP but don't like their party, you can still have the better candidate without signalling that you fully endorse whatever that party's ideals are.

I just think that parties are more of a problem than anything. Ideally, you'd have a system without parties. But even if you could prohibit them officially, people will still line up along their own lines of allegiances (it's just human nature to build those sort of "tribes"). You have friends with similar views, and you help each other out; that kind of thing is natural. I'd say it's best to have them out in the open where we can endorse the one we feel is best. So to me, I think we need something that balances the power allotted to a party. I mean, what good is a direct representative if they are being coerced to vote along with the party even if they personally don't like the decision? That's the part that irritates me.

I don't feel that preferential voting really addresses the party balance issue; it doesn't provide enough balance at the party level. It's basically one step removed from first-past-the-post. Sure, it's better, but since you're still constrained to 1 riding = 1 seat, you might end up with a situation where a party is overrepresented in regard to the total votes across all ridings.

The irritating part is the over-representation above seems to give parties the idea along the lines of "well Canada gave us a majority so they agree with whatever we're going to do." All parties do that shit, and it's frustrating.

But no matter what, there are perks and drawbacks to each system. That means it's not an easy choice, outside of what we have now needs to change to something better.