Two years later, the U.S. is still an outlier among democracies
When the Biden Administration held its first “Summit for Democracy” in 2021, we wrote about how the United States was an outlier among its fellow democracies due to our broken “winner-take-all” election system. As President Biden hosts yet another Summit for Democracy starting today, too little has changed.
Every election cycle, millions of Americans are effectively “locked out” of representation. Gerrymandering regularly upends the will of voters, and less than a quarter of eligible voters voted for a winning U.S. House candidate last year. The root of these problems is that we elect just a single representative from each congressional district, and anyone who doesn’t vote for that person is effectively excluded from representation.
From Germany to New Zealand to Japan, our fellow democracies have improved their elections by adopting proportional voting systems to choose some or all of their national legislators. Proportional elections ensure majority rule while providing a fair number of seats to minority viewpoints.
In the United States, the best approach is proportional ranked choice voting (RCV) – an American approach to proportional representation that preserves the ideals of local representatives and voting for candidates rather than parties. Here’s how it works:
Right now, proportional RCV is growing in popularity at a local level. Just last year, it was adopted in Portland, Maine; Portland, Oregon; and Arlington, Virginia, which collectively are home to nearly a million people.
Proportional RCV is also gaining traction in Congress. In 2021, seven members of Congress introduced the Fair Representation Act (FRA), which would implement proportional RCV for the U.S. House of Representatives. Last year, they were joined by Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández as the bill’s first Latina co-sponsor. We’re excited to continue building support for the FRA when it is reintroduced this year.
To support the ranked choice voting movement, consider joining an RCV group in your state. With hard work and a growing movement for better elections, the U.S. may not be an outlier when the next democracy summit is held.
