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.

▲

Timwi 3 hours ago | parent [-]

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 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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