To address these challenges, the United States must move away from its winner-take-all electoral system and adopt proportional representation in the House of Representatives.
Proportional representation is a time-tested system used by a majority of advanced democracies around the world, and it is a clear and constitutional solution to many of the challenges facing our country. It would render gerrymandering pointless and better reflect each state’s political leanings and diverse voices, including underrepresented women and people of color. It would offer every voter fair representation, including Democrats living in “red” districts, Republicans living in “blue” districts, and independents and third party supporters who currently have little direct representation. It would sideline extreme anti-democratic forces that could no longer translate a minority of votes into outsized political power. New parties and factions would be encouraged to form, making coalitions more fluid and ending the broken “us vs. them” binary doom loop destroying our politics.
Adopting proportional representation would be a significant change to our political system. But absent a major course correction, the future of American democracy looks bleak: deepening national crises, further democratic erosion, growing threats of authoritarianism and minority rule, and continued failure of our elected officials and government to confront the major challenges facing our nation. Proportional representation is an urgently needed reform to strengthen American democracy and make it responsive, representative, and resilient for the 21st century.