More things about the Government

New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of government. This means that our head of state is a sovereign, currently, the sovereign is Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen is represented in NZ by the Governor-General, Dame Patsy Reddy. Our Government is made up of a democratically elected House of Representatives. The Government advises our head of State. MMP is our current voting system to select our Parliament. In this system, each voter gets two votes, the first is for the party you prefer. This is the vote that mainly decides how many seats each party, out of the 120 seats in parliament, gets. The second vote is for which person you want to represent your electorate. New Zealand is currently divided into 71 electorates. Whoever gets the most votes will win and become your local Member of Parliament and they will have a seat in Parliament. To get any seats in Parliament a party must have at least 5% of the votes or have an electorate seat. Let's say a party got 40% of votes, these are first filled with the won electorate seats and then other members of the party. If a party got 4% percent of the votes they are not entitled to any seats, but if they won an electorate they would be entitled to 4 more seats in Parliament.

Sites I used for Information:
https://www.govt.nz/browse/engaging-with-government/government-in-new-zealand/
https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/how-parliament-works/our-system-of-government/
http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system