Real Choices / New Voices

by Douglas J. Amy

There is a growing realization that many of the problems afflicting American elections can be traced to the electoral system itself, in particular to our winner-take-all approach to electing officials. Douglas Amy demonstrates that switching to proportional representation elections -- the voting system used in most other Western democracies, by which officials are elected in large, multimember districts according to the proportion of the vote won by their parties -- would enliven democratic political debate, increase voter choice and voter turnout, ensure fair representation for third.