In 2026, a range of political scientists and legal scholars, elected officials, and voting rights leaders across the political spectrum have shared their support for proportional representation in American elections. Proportional representation is already used for elections in most democracies, and ensures elections are fair for all voters and that every voice is heard. Instead of electing one legislator, different groups of voters elect winners in proportion to their share of the votes cast. 

The calls for proportional representation have increased since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais that dismantled landmark protections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 and undermined bedrock principles of American democracy. The Court’s ruling gutted enforcement of Section 2 of the VRA, which had protected voters of color from racial discrimination and ensured they had fair representation in our government.

The decision also unleashed what FairVote’s David Daley called a “gerrymandering dragon.” Several Southern states quickly moved to erase congressional districts that provided voters of color an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect candidates of their choice. 

In the wake of these events, voting rights leaders, elected officials, journalists, and academics have called for creative solutions to make the United States a more fair and representative democracy. Those solutions include bringing proportional representation and multi-member districts to Congress – reforms that would make gerrymandering virtually impossible and ensure every community has a voice.

See a selection of calls for proportional representation and multi-member districts below:

How do we secure a multiracial democracy when representation depends on a court that is openly hostile to voting rights? In response, civil rights groups and other Americans committed to democracy should consider more proportional voting systems that can reduce gerrymandering and make representation less dependent on judicial intervention.

– Professor Spencer Overton, George Washington University

Gerrymandering is a problem of antiquated electoral rules. The United States elects its House members through single-member districts. This electoral system makes the drawing of district lines consequential in the first place. As long as that system remains intact, distorted election outcomes will persist. We write to urge Congress to do what most democracies have already done: adopt proportional representation.

– An open letter from Scholars for Redistricting Reform, composed of 500 of the nation’s top democracy, voting rights, and legal experts

We have always called the men who wrote the Constitution the founders. But before they founded anything, they were architects. Someone had to draw the plans, decide what would hold the weight, decide what was non-negotiable. The founding came at the end of that work, not the beginning.

That is where we are… We are not the first people to face this question. Ireland adopted proportional representation when its electoral system was crushing minority voices.

– LaTosha Brown, Black Voters Matter Fund co-founder

America’s rigid two-party, winner-take-all structure creates incentives for polarization and minority rule. Congress and states could move toward multi-member districts with proportional representation – no constitutional amendment required. More voters would have a representative they actually voted for, and genuine multiparty competition would replace a system where the only real choice is Republican versus Democrat.

– Shikha Dalmia, president of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and Andy Craig, senior editor at The UnPopulist

A growing body of research strongly suggests that Americans of all types, including Latinos, would benefit from a move to a fairer system for all voters, one that aligns voters’ actual preferences more closely with our electoral outcomes, and where every vote matters.

A different electoral system – one used by most other mature democracies around the world – would ensure this: under Proportional Representation, multi-winner districts are used to allocate votes proportionally so that our elected representatives reflect the actual preferences of voters.

– Cecilia Muñoz, former director of the White House Policy Council

[Reforms in response to the Callais decision] could be passage of a stronger, revitalized Voting Rights Act along with a national ban on partisan gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting – in other words, some combination of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the stillborn For the People Act – or it could be something more radical, like… moving the country toward proportional representation.

– Jamelle Bouie, New York Times columnist

The House of Representatives… should be proportional. For school board or city council, sometimes you get more than one vote and more than one person wins – we could do that for Congress. The people who get the top three votes, not just one, get to go to Congress. So you’d have bigger districts, fewer districts, harder to gerrymander.

– Pete Buttigieg, former Secretary of Transportation

There’s actually a clear option for voting rights policy that would guard against racial discrimination while preserving the hard-won gains of the Voting Rights Act: proportional representation. By amending the Uniform Congressional District Act, Congress could neutralize the gerrymandering arms race and restore equality of opportunity to our democratic process.

– Professors Michael Latner, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

I call for congressional establishment nationwide of nonpartisan independent redistricting commissions to permanently take map-drawing out of politicians’ hands, and for Congress to authorize multi-member congressional districts with proportional representation systems to prevent partisan shut-outs and drown-outs across the country.

– U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin (MD-8)

[It’s time to pass] the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act – with voting rights protections, a national gerrymandering ban, donor disclosure requirements, and other anti-corruption measures. But that’s just the start. [We also need U.S.] House reform: doubling its size, and adopting multi-member districts with proportional representation, so that everyone, across race and ethnicity and geography and ideology, can have a voice in the People’s House.

– Ben Wikler, former Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party

Much of the United States’ progress as a multiracial democracy is owed to the VRA. Continuing that progress following the Callais decision will require restoring the VRA and working to reform our elections so that every voter – regardless of their race or ethnicity – is represented fairly. Proportional representation and multi-member districts offer a path forward.

To learn more about the impact proportional representation and multi-member districts would have on Congress, visit our page on the Fair Representation Act.