Series: Proportional Representation in Washington
Proportional representation (ProRep) is a voting method. For Americans and many Canadians, most voters are used to the “winner-take-all” method—the person or party with the most votes wins, and everyone else is a loser.
By contrast, ProRep means candidates and parties win seats in proportion to the votes people cast for them. Forty percent of the vote, for example, equates to 40 percent of the power. ProRep comes in many varieties, but the basic idea is to let voters elect more than one representative at a time in a way that ensures the mix of elected officials reflects the mix of voters.
Most prosperous democracies around the world elect representatives with the ProRep system—it’s democracy 2.0
