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In the News
February 23, 2024

The two-party doom loop

The more divisive our politics, the more unproductive our policymaking. The more unproductive our policymaking, the more anger and frustration fuels more blame and division. Immigration and foreign policy are complicated subjects. They cross-cut the parties in ways that could facilitate creative, bipartisan dealmaking — and in an earlier time, they would have.

In the News
October 25, 2023

Can Proportional Representation Fix Our Broken Politics?

Dustin Wahl debates Robert Litan about whether proportional representation can help address the crisis of sharp polarization and division in America.

In the News
October 21, 2023

The Only Way to Fix Congress

"Moving to a new election system would require a long and hard process. But it may be necessary if we want our legislative branch to work. Without change we’ll wind up with more of the same."

In the News
October 9, 2023

Matt Gaetz Is Half Right

"The chaos in Congress might seem indicative of a failing democracy. But perhaps the latest Capitol Hill collapse is a sign: Our current House structure is obsolete."

In the News
October 7, 2023

The GOP is splitting apart, it just doesn’t know it yet

"[Fix Our House] proposes switching to “proportional representation” — awarding seats in Congress based on a party’s share of the vote, not to whichever candidate gets a bare majority.

In the News
September 8, 2023

Polarization: Is America Too Fragmented? Rick Pildes and Lee Drutman

Lee Drutman and Rick Pildes debate the causes of America's deep polarization and potential solutions to help pull us out of it.

In the News
August 29, 2023

Let’s Start Bringing 80 Million Americans Back Into the Political Process

"If we want to get nonvoters engaged, we need to find a way to help them feel connected to politics."

In the News
July 26, 2023

'Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop' with Lee Drutman on Wednesday's Access Utah

"The two-party system is breaking our democracy, and driving us all crazy."

In the News
July 22, 2023

Dustin Wahl on Full Circle Florida

"It is being called the radical idea to fix democracy in America, but can it work? The group pushing for a complete redesign of congress explains why this is important and how your vote counts."

In the News
July 11, 2023

Lee Drutman on Washington Journal

Proportional representation could expand the two-party system in the U.S. and break us out of the binary us-vs-them conflict in our politics today.

In the News
July 6, 2023

A Radical Idea for Fixing Polarization

According to a growing number of political-reform advocates, winner-take-all elections have outlasted their effectiveness and could prove ruinous for American democracy if left in place.

In the News
July 5, 2023

Our two-party political system isn’t working. The fix? More parties.

Like it or not, there is simply no way around organized parties in modern mass democracy. Something needs to organize power and arrange policy choices. And political parties are the most effective, transparent, inclusive vehicles for doing this.

In the News
July 3, 2023

Wish You Had More Political Choice? The Answer Isn’t a Third-Party Candidate.

Our system of single-winner elections puts tremendous pressure on politicians and voters to consolidate around two options. If we want more parties, we need better, fairer voting rules—not more protest candidates.

In the News
July 3, 2023

More Parties, Better Parties: The Case for Pro-Parties Democracy Reform

Political parties are the central institutions of modern representative democracy. They must also be at the center of efforts to reform American democracy.

In the News
July 3, 2023

Beyond Biden vs. Trump

America’s winner-take-all electoral system casts third-party candidates as spoilers—but what would it take to open the door to not just a third party, but a fourth or more?

In the News
July 1, 2023

Reforms possible for polarized political system, Aspen Ideas Festival panel says

“Political parties are the central institutions of modern representative democracy,” he said. “Without political parties connecting people to government, we have demagoguery, chaos.”

In the News
May 16, 2023

Fix Our House's Dustin Wahl on the Stride Podcast

"I don't think our generation will tolerate the inability to bring about change."

In the News
March 30, 2023

Fixing the House with Proportional Representation

Lee and Stephan Kyburz discuss proportional representation and Fix Our House's vision for a path to make it possible in the U.S.

In the News
March 20, 2023

Only 10% of House races were competitive in 2022, improvement in 2024 seems unlikely

A report from Fix Our House found that 90% of House races in last year's election were decided by more than 5 percentage points, meaning only 10% of races were competitive.

In the News
March 16, 2023

Report: “Dysfunction” in Congress Can Be Remedied by Proportional Representation

“At the heart of the dysfunction in Congress is America’s redistricting process and the fundamentally broken way we elect representatives,” states the report from Fix Our House, an organization that promotes proportional representation.

In the News
March 13, 2023

New report on how many 2022 House races were actually competitive

First in The Early: Just 10 percent of House races were competitive in last year’s midterms, according to a new report from the advocacy group Fix Our House.

In the News
March 13, 2023

Only 10 percent of House races were competitive in midterms: advocacy group

The group proposed a new way of electing representatives, like using proportional representation that would let a political party’s share of votes in an election determine how many seats it holds in the legislature.

In the News
February 6, 2023

Understanding the Partisan Divide: How Demographics and Policy Views Shape Party Coalitions

Democratic and Republican districts differ in important ways on demographic variables and policy views. Our winner-take-all system reduces these differences to a binary, hiding the diversity of districts and possible areas of overlap.

In the News
January 31, 2023

Fix Our House's Dustin Wahl on the Lex Listen podcast

Dustin talks about his experience with reform movements at his alma mater and how it led him to take an interest in democracy reform.

In the News
January 26, 2023

Lee Drutman on the Keen On podcast

Proportional representation is the key reform to better represent all Americans and break the us-vs-them divide in Washington.

In the News
January 21, 2023

This one reform could fix our broken elections

"Our single-district system invites the judicialization of elections. Judges, not voters, then decide who wins... The solution is as simple yet transformative: A mode of proportional representation, with multimember districts, would solve the problem in one blow."

In the News
December 21, 2022

The Real Winners of the 2024 Election Could be China and Russia

This is how democracies die: in extreme polarization. Winning and losing becomes more important than preserving democracy, and eventually one side turns to violence to “save the country.”

In the News
December 16, 2022

"What’s going right in America?" Lee Drutman on The Economist's Checks and Balance podcast

"We are going through is probably the fourth great period of transformation in American politics. . . as the wreckage continues, we will have the chance to build something new."

In the News
December 12, 2022

Scholar explains how proportional representation could help American politics

"What we really need is a more proportional system that allows for much broader diversity of representation across a much fuller political spectrum."

In the News
November 6, 2022

"In the United States, the notion of legitimate opposition, a fundamental principle of democracy, is going down the drain"

"The American elections are above all – as they have been for at least ten years – a tug of war for that handful of votes. Almost all the voters of the next election have already made their choice years ago: they have chosen a party."

In the News
November 5, 2022

Lee Drutman on CBS Saturday Morning

"We tend to view our system as fixed, as unchangeable... but it's not. We've changed it throughout our history. We're not sleepwalkers fated to walk into a democratic collapse. We can choose."

In the News
November 1, 2022

Why Do People Who Don’t Like Politics Hold the Fate of the Country in Their Hands?

Fix Our House Co-Founders Lee Drutman and Charlotte Hill write in The New York Times that swing voters who pay little attention to politics have outsized power in our elections thanks to our broken winner-take-all system.

In the News
October 17, 2022

Can more political parties solve our polarization problems?

In a multiparty democracy, more cooperation takes place because no party owns a dominating majority, and more people feel represented by their government.

In the News
October 12, 2022

Lee Drutman on the Political Orphanage Podcast

If America's House districts had multiple representatives each, it would allow more Americans to be represented, and allow more political parties to become viable.

In the News
September 20, 2022

Scholars Ask Congress to Scrap Winner-Take-All Political System

"If there’s one thing we know about America’s creaking democracy, it’s this: Whenever it seems fundamentally broken, people get together to try to fix it. That’s happening now."

In the News
September 19, 2022

What We Know About Redistricting and Redistricting Reform

Many of the problems attributed to gerrymandering are actually problems with districting, and more specifically with the use of the single-member district.

In the News
September 16, 2022

Lee Drutman on The Whole Truth with David Eisenhower

Americans are increasingly saying that they don’t like our two-party system, and they want more options.

In the News
August 16, 2022

Eli Zupnick on the Common Bridge podcast

"We should be able to have a democracy where people can vote their conscience... and not have to worry that they're throwing their vote away, or even worse, helping the other side."

In the News
August 3, 2022

Farbod Faraji and Lee Drutman: Hungary’s Viktor Orbán can thank the US for facilitating his rise to power

Why would Orbán, the self-proclaimed champion of illiberal democracy, find inspiration in the U.S. electoral system? Simply put, our electoral system uniquely advantages authoritarians such as Orbán and rewards anti-democratic extremism.

In the News
August 2, 2022

Speaker Pushes For Broader Electoral, Party System Reforms

“Now, we are going through this real moment in this hinge point in our politics in which the old order is clearly collapsing,” Drutman said. “It’s a moment of transformation. And we’ve got to figure out how to build something new that takes the best principles of American democracy and updates them for our modern era.”

In the News
July 26, 2022

Is Proportional Representation the Answer to Our Gridlock?

Listen to Eli Zupnick on the America Trends podcast: "Everyone should be represented in Congress, even if they live in a place where the majority of their neighbors don't agree with them."

In the News
July 21, 2022

Should We End The Two-Party System?

Instead of every political conflict becoming existential because it is all part of one grand zero-sum partisan death match, we need more small conflicts, each with different coalitions.

In the News
July 14, 2022

Is It Third Party or Third Rail?

“This is a moment that is ripe for political reform,” Lee Drutman tells the Sun. “I think everybody believes the current system is broken.”

In the News
June 23, 2022

What We Lose When We Lose Competitive Congressional Districts

The decline of competitive districts is a problem that reflects deeper causes of partisan polarization and leaves the overwhelming majority of Americans in places where their votes don’t matter.

In the News
June 21, 2022

How To Escape Gun Control Gridlock

We need to understand why, despite shooting after shooting, the prospects for meaningful national gun reform just seem to grow more dispiriting.

In the News
June 15, 2022

Party Factions and American Politics

"Multiparty democracies are more stable. They are more responsive. They represent diverse interests better. Economic inequality is lower. Parties are stronger. Voter turnout is higher. Compromise is more valued. Citizens who live in them are happier, and more satisfied with the state of democracy."

In the News
May 11, 2022

Lee Drutman on the Great Battlefield Podcast

"Anybody who studies comparative electoral systems thinks that our system is really dumb."

In the News
April 27, 2022

Fix Our House Co-Founder Eli Zupnick on The Other Side of Midnight

"The more people see how gridlocked and dysfunctional and unrepresentative our democracy is, the more their appetite grows for reforms like this."

In the News
April 26, 2022

The Most Important Political Race in America

Lee Drutman weighs in on breaking news that Democrats are getting behind independent Evan McMullin in Utah in hopes of ousting GOP Senator Mike Lee.

In the News
April 21, 2022

How Democracies Revive

"To disrupt the status quo requires both a bold optimism about longer-term possibilities and a commensurate willingness to gamble on the shorter term."

In the News
April 18, 2022

Fix Our House Co-Founder Eli Zupnick on The Jeff Ward Show

"We need real structural change to our system, because our system disincentivizes cooperation, promotes dysfunction, and it's just going to keep getting worse."

In the News
April 8, 2022

Partisan ‘doom loop’? The answer is more parties, this group says

"Fix Our House believes proportional representation is the key to ending gerrymandering, breaking up congressional deadlock and reducing partisan divisions."

In the News
March 25, 2022

We Need To Change the Way We Elect Members of Congress

In this current crisis of democracy, it is very easy to focus only on the immediate threats. But we cannot just play defense.

In the News
March 16, 2022

Moderation, Realignment, or Transformation? Evaluating Three Approaches to America’s Crisis of Democracy

Moderation and realignment are unlikely to respond to the challenges facing U.S. democracy. Transformation is necessary.

In the News
March 7, 2022

American Democracy Is Broken. Can Proportional Representation Fix It?

“There are major structural problems with a two-party system where one party simply rejects democracy. And the only way it’s going to change is if we make the structural changes to pull us back from the brink.”

In the News
March 3, 2022

Talking a Voting Overhaul, Part 1

The Talk Policy To Me podcast interviews Fix Our House Co-founder Charlotte Hill about the need for proportional representation in America.

In the News
February 23, 2022

Our Three Futures

If the future of American democracy feels uncertain, that’s because it is. So, what will the rest of the decade look like?

In the News
February 14, 2022

To End Gerrymandering, Change How We Elect Congress

Bad as gerrymandering may be, the core problem is the single-member district. And that’s something we can change.

In the News
February 10, 2022

Democracy in crisis, part 2: The two-party problem

Zack Beauchamp and Lee Drutman discuss structural reforms to break American politics out of its doom loop of dysfunction.

In the News
January 26, 2022

How to depolarize a country

Just what exactly are the roots of our current democratic decay, and what can we to do fix it?

In the News
January 19, 2022

What January 6 revealed about the attack on multiracial democracy

The US's outmoded political structure, dominated by the two major parties, keeps diverse representation and pluralism just beyond reach.

In the News
January 7, 2022

Abolish Two-Party Systems

A two-party system that by definition splits a country in half will reinforce and deepen identity polarization, pushing national politics even further into trench warfare.

In the News
November 8, 2021

Lee Drutman on Forward with Andrew Yang

Lee traces the decline of bipartisanship and explains why we need proportional representation

In the News
September 8, 2021

Quiz: If America Had Six Parties, Which Would You Belong To?

There is no reasonable or timely way to fix this broken system. But there is an alternative: more parties.

In the News
July 6, 2021

Here’s a different way to fix gerrymandering

Even independent redistricting commissions are limited by the fact that Democrats cluster in cities while Republicans are widely dispersed. But there’s a solution.

In the News
June 16, 2021

Why The Two-Party System Is Effing Up U.S. Democracy

Other democracies are polarized, but the U.S. is unique.

In the News
March 19, 2021

American Democracy Can't Survive Unless the Far Right Is Marginalized. Here's How to Do It

We need to reform the U.S. voting system to allow for new parties to emerge outside the existing two-party system.

In the News
March 1, 2021

How to fix democracy: Move beyond the two-party system, experts say

A record number of Americans say Democrats and Republicans are doing such a poor job that a third party is needed, polling shows

In the News
October 2, 2020

To save our democracy (and our sanity), blow up the two-party system

A practical plan for making Congress more interesting, more effective, and more representative.

In the News
May 19, 2020

Which kinds of democracies respond more effectively to a pandemic?

When citizens vote for parties rather than individuals, countries gain better health systems

In the News
January 23, 2020

The two-party system is killing our democracy

Here’s a long-shot idea to fix our system and make our democracy more democratic.

In the News
January 2, 2020

America Is Now the Divided Republic the Framers Feared

John Adams worried that “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.” And that’s exactly what has come to pass.

In the News
October 19, 2019

Let a Thousand Parties Bloom

The only way to prevent America’s two-party system from succumbing to extremism is to scrap it altogether.

In the News
January 1, 2018

The Case for Proportional Voting

The Republican Party under President Donald Trump has come unmoored from classic conservative values and shows no interest in returning to them.

July 7, 2023

ICYMI: The Atlantic Covers Fix Our House and Growing Movement for Proportional Representation

A growing number of political-reform advocates. . . blame the current winner-take-all system for driving U.S. politics toward dangerous levels of polarization.

May 10, 2023

Fix Our House Releases New Report on Structural Causes of Debt Limit Crisis and Legislative Dysfunction

Single-member congressional districts make performative conflict easy and responsible compromise difficult, motivating each party to treat the debt limit breach as a weapon to use against the other, not as a crisis to be avoided.

May 1, 2023

North Carolina Supreme Court Ruling Made Possible By Winner-Take-All Districts

With proportional representation, there would no longer be a need for so much litigation over gerrymandering, and there would be fewer opportunities for hard-fought election contests to turn into hard-fought legal contests.

March 14, 2023

ICYMI: Washington Post Early 202 Covers Fix Our House Report On Failures Of Single-Winner Districts

Fix Our House released a new report on the 2022 redistricting cycle that was covered in the Washington Post Early 202 newsletter and The Hill.

March 13, 2023

Fix Our House Releases Report On 2022 Redistricting Cycle

To understand the new Congress and the current dysfunction on Capitol Hill, we need to look beyond the individual personalities in play and the 2022 midterms that elected them and consider the fundamentally broken way we conduct elections.

March 9, 2023

Fix Our House Statement on President Biden’s Budget and the Debt Ceiling Fight

America’s binary two-party system turns what might otherwise be basic steps of governing into us-vs-them political warfare.

December 20, 2022

Fix Our House Statement on the January 6 Committee Referral

In order to protect our country from the still ever-present threat of political violence, we need to go further and adopt reforms that address the underlying unhealth in our political system.

December 8, 2022

Moore v. Harper Reveals Flaws of Single-Member Districts

The Supreme Court should not throw out 200 years of precedent based on a bogus theory that could devastate representation in the United States. But whatever the Court decides, Congress could avoid this problem entirely by empowering states to adopt proportional representation.

November 2, 2022

ICYMI: Fix Our House In NYT: Control Of Congress Is Determined By Too Few Americans

“Swing voters have gained a reputation for being the one remaining moderating force in our politics. But more often they are a mercurial mix of unorthodoxy and political uninterest — and they hold disproportionate power to decide the fate of the country.”

November 1, 2022

ICYMI: Washington Post Covers Proportional Representation As Crucial Election Reform

Most democracies “use some form of proportional representation to allow multiple points of view to be represented in a legislature according to their strength in the public.”

October 18, 2022

ICYMI: The New Republic Cites Letter from 200+ Political Scientists in Call For LA City Council to End Single-Member Districts

"If you tried to invent a fictional scandal to make the case for abolishing single-member districts, you would be hard pressed to outdo the real scandal that is now consuming Los Angeles and its political elite."

September 21, 2022

ICYMI: The New York Times Covers Letter From 200+ Democracy Scholars Asking Congress To End Winner-Take-All Elections

In case you missed it, yesterday The New York Times reported on an open letter from more than 200 leading democracy experts calling on Congress to reject its winner-take-all system of elections and adopt multi-member districts with proportional representation.

September 20, 2022

Over 200 Democracy Scholars Call On Congress To End Single-Member Congressional Districts And Adopt Proportional Representation

Today, more than 200 political scientists, legal scholars, and historians from academic institutions across the United States released an open letter calling on Congress to reject the United States’ winner-take-all system of elections and adopt proportional representation.

September 14, 2022

Final Primaries of Election Season Show Problems with Single-Member Districts

The House is supposed to be the voice of the people, but single-member districts with winner-take-all election rules allow a state’s representatives to be chosen by little more than half the voters, leaving the other half completely voiceless.

September 7, 2022

Single-Member Districts Leave MA Republicans Voiceless in Congress

Donald Trump won 32% of the state in 2020 and 33% in 2016. And Massachusetts typically has a Republican governor, electing only one Democrat to the state’s highest office since 1992. In spite of that, Massachusetts Republicans will likely once again have no representatives of choice elected to Congress this fall.

September 2, 2022

With Proportional Representation, We Wouldn’t Need To Constantly Battle For The Soul Of The Nation

America has more than just two kinds of people, and that diversity is part of our nation’s soul. We deserve an electoral system that respects that.

August 24, 2022

NY & FL PRIMARIES: Single-Member Districts Leave Too Many Americans Voiceless In Congress

If the U.S. adopted proportional representation with multi-member districts, Florida and New York would send delegations to Washington that actually represent their communities.

August 17, 2022

WYOMING PRIMARY: Single-Member House Districts Leave No Room For Conservatives Who Challenge Trump

Single-member congressional districts with winner-take-all elections ensure that most seats are determined by primaries and only the largest plurality wins, leaving giant portions of the country – including conservatives who don’t support Trump – voiceless in Congress.

August 10, 2022

4 Primary Results That Show Why Single-Member Districts Are Terrible For Democracy

The core problem is simple: single-member districts, by their very nature, leave too many voters unrepresented. Even when they aren’t intentionally gerrymandered, they prevent minority voters from having their votes turn into representation.

July 28, 2022

Fix Our House Co-Founder Lee Drutman Testifies at House Modernization Committee Hearing

"As a scholar of history, I see this decade as a potential moment of transformation. The status quo is broken. There are those who want to burn it all to the ground. But I, at least, want to restore and renew the promise of liberal, republican democracy in America."

June 22, 2022

ICYMI: Lee Drutman in Noēma Magazine: We Need Proportional Representation to Truly Solve Gun Crisis in America

"In order to truly address the crisis of gun violence in America, we need to reform the electoral system that makes major legislation nearly impossible."

June 15, 2022

ICYMI: Portland, OR Will Vote on Proportional Representation this Fall

The Portland Charter Commission voted to give the people of Portland a chance to adopt proportional representation for the city government this November.

April 11, 2022

ICYMI: Roll Call: Partisan ‘doom loop’? The answer is more parties, this group says

Report in Roll Call on the recent launch of Fix Our House, a new campaign for proportional representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the growing movement for proportional representation.

March 21, 2022

ICYMI: FiveThirtyEight: This Redistricting Cycle Failed To Increase Representation For People Of Color — And Could Even Set It Back

With Voting Rights Act protections stripped away and the number of majority-minority districts not increasing in proportion with minority-driven population growth, people of color in the United States are facing yet more barriers to fair representation in congress.

March 8, 2022

ICYMI: The New Republic Covers the Launch of Fix Our House, a New Campaign for Proportional Representation in the U.S. House of Representatives

Fix Our House launched yesterday to promote proportional representation as an urgently-needed reform for the U.S. House of Representatives.

March 7, 2022

Fix Our House Launches to Promote Proportional Representation in House of Representatives

The co-founders of Fix Our House announced the launch of a new education and advocacy campaign to advance proportional representation in the House of Representatives.

Report

Debt Limit Chicken: Why Washington Plays Games with Disaster

Brinkmanship and crises aren’t random accidents in our democracy – they are inevitable outcomes of an electoral system that incentivizes and rewards them.

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Report

Single-Winner Districts and the Failures of Redistricting

Fix Our House's analysis of the 2022 redistricting cycle and how proportional representation would make for fairer districts and more functional politics.

Read the Report
Report

Fix Our House Brief

Learn more about the benefits of multi-winner districts and proportional representation with this single-page summary.

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