1) Return selection of Senators to the States.

2) At-large national election of Representatives with each voter getting 5 votes.

First 400 or so past the post win.
Each Rep has one vote on procedural matters.
Each Rep has a vote proportional to their popular vote when voting on proposed laws.

Not entirely true. In Canada’s parliamentary system, MPs are elected in single-member districts under winner-take-all (by plurality). This commentator is talking about a closed list-based voting system, which is independent of the relationship between the legislative and executive branches.

Thomas Knapp’s comments are more to the point. Multi-member districts do not require a constitutional amendment, indeed. Theoretically, the states set the manner of election. In reality, Congress banned multi-member districts in 1967. Before then, several states elected their delegations at-large under winner-take-all. That meant 50% + 1 voter could sweep every single seat up for grabs. The 1967 law, in tandem with the Voting Rights Act, meant legislatures in protected states had to draw some districts in which racial minorities were guaranteed election.

So going back to multi-member districts only requires a small statutory change – but one Congress is unlikely to enact. It runs counter to the political self-interest of many U.S. Reps who benefit from a system of single-member districts – many of which are gerrymandered.

Approval voting in statewide, at-large elections is one way, in theory, to ensure fair representation for racial and political minorities while providing a majority of seats to the majority of voters. But there are problems with approval voting, not least a built-in tendency to degenerate into normal plurality elections as voters become familiar with the method.

FairVote advocates for a system of smaller “superdistricts” of up to 5 members each, elected at-large using a proportional voting method – cumulative, limited or choice voting. Alternatively, the present system of single-member districts could be retained, but additional members could be elected at-large to accountability seats. That would correct for any disproportionality between votes cast and seats won – disproportionality introduced by the system of single-member districts, gerrymanders and, in most cases, what’s just a natural partisan geography.

As far as third parties go, the former proposal probably would be more beneficial. But the latter isn’t terrible either.

Incidentally, it is possible to do proportional representation while keeping primarily single-member districts, using what’s called the “mixed member” system. This is what they use in Germany and in the proposal that was considered in the UK.

Check out fairvote.org and midwestdemocracy.org for info on this sort of stuff.

I know it’s just a marriage by convenience, but those meetings together must be a lot of fun!

I, too, would like to distinguish this concept from the messy and socialist parlimentary systems in Europe and the rest of the world.

Proportional representation is the perfect issue for a coaliton campaign by all of the “3rd Parties” in this country along, of course, with continued liberalization of ballot access laws.

For example, the election of US Representatives could be substantially changed at the state level. There is no requirement in the Constitution that US Representatives be elected on the basis of geographic districts, or that they be elected in “first past the post” races discrete to each seat. Finally, the US Constitution says that the state legislatures shall set the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections,” so even state constitutional amendments shouldn’t be necessary.

Here’s what I’d like to see a state try:

1) All US Representatives from thestate elected “at large”—if a state is entitled to five seats in the US House, then all the state’s voters get to participate in choosing all five of those congresscritters.

This would instantly eliminate gerrymandering, of both the cooperative (“we’ll take this district and y’all get that one”) or competitive (“if we draw the line down the center of this block, cross the river, then go east but cut around that neighborhood, we’ll have two districts with a slim Republican majority instead of one with a big Republican majority and one with a big Democratic majority”) varieties.

2) Either the removal of party labels from the ballot entirely, coupled with approval voting (each voter votes for ALL of the candidates he or she is WILLING to see sent to Washington as a US Representative, and the top X vote-getters, X being the number of seats, are elected), OR

3) Vote by party rather than candidate, with all parties (under very loose “ballot access” requirements) receiving more than 1/Xth of the vote (X once again being the number of seats) receiving seats proportionate to the votes that party received.

The latter method would result in some third party victories in big states, probably fewer or none in small states. For example, Missouri has 9 US House seats, so a party would have to get about 11% of the vote—more than most third party candidates get now—to get a single seat. California, on the other hand, has (if the Google I just performed is recent) 53 seats, which means that a party could get a seat with less than 2% of the vote … eminently doable.

In my opinion, geographic districts are obsolete and have been for a long time. They were a solution for an age when people identified with each other on the basis of geographic co-location, and when travel, communication and information dissemination were difficult, expensive and time-consuming. These days, I know people I agree (or stridently disagree) with politically better than I know my physical neighbors, and I can disseminate (or gather) information with the click of a mouse.

for 2010, assuming many of us stay with the LP, what we really need is a way to increase the voting power of members in the LP that dont go the the Convention.

I’d love to hear answers to this.

Someone ought to talk to Jason Sorens, and find out how exactly the Free State Project orchestrated their online vote so that it was fair and reliable… and then pressure the LP to set up a similar system.

I would oppose anything that takes power from the states and gives it to the federal government