it considered to be an "acceptable" range of representation thresholds for New Zealand. And it said (to simplify and paraphrase) that the party vote threshold should be reduced from the present 5%, but go no lower than 3%. It came up with this lower end figure by considering (it said) the potential splintering effect that a lower threshold could have on Government formation and the effectiveness of political parties in the legislature, as well as claiming that a voting system with a threshold of less than 3% would be so different to the current one as to effectively constitute a new electoral process. (This second point is important, and I'll come back to it - the Commission interpreted its role in conducting this review as being to tweak the version of MMP that the public had voted to retain at the 2011 referendum, not to recommend changes that would result in a qualitatively different method of voting.) Now, it could be argued that the Commission was wrong to even consider what an appropriate representation threshold ought to be ... that democracy must by its very nature mean there should be "no threshold" at all when it comes to representation in Parliament. But that's a nonsense claim - designating a representation threshold is unavoidable when designing an electoral system. As I noted in this post : Any form of representation of the voters is going to fail to fully include all groups (much less individuals) vying for a share of parliamentary