Excellent. America needs more than two parties, and needs PR, open and non-partisan primaries, and no gerrymandering to get it. Tom Mast Congress is Vital
This piece uses Britain’s current political shake-up, where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is threatening to supplant the Conservatives, as a mirror for the United States. It argues that both countries suffer under winner-take-all (first-past-the-post) voting systems, which appear stable but are in fact brittle, exclusionary, and ripe for hijacking by populist extremists.
Rather than producing true multiparty democracy, disruptive third parties often either replace an existing major party or fracture votes, enabling the worst actors to win. That’s how Trump didn’t need to form a new party. He just cannibalized the GOP from within. Likewise, Farage isn’t making space for new voices; he’s just replacing the Tories with a more radical nationalist flavor.
WHY THIS MATTERS TO AMERICA:
Because it’s our own damn future in preview. If we don’t fix our rigged two-party system, we’re setting the stage for another authoritarian, maybe smarter and slicker than Trump, to seize control using the same outdated party infrastructure. And once they have the wheel, they don’t give it back.
But here’s the kicker: political collapse creates opportunity. In both countries, there’s a narrow window where coalitions of pro-democracy actors could actually change the system. Not just the players. The rules. By shifting to proportional representation, we could break the toxic two-party doom loop and build a truly representative democracy.
It’s not utopian. It’s basic democratic hygiene. And if we don’t do it before the next rupture, we’ll be stuck picking between tyrants and enablers. Again.
Proportional representation does not work, but democracy does need major redesign!
As a 78 year old New Zealander who has lived through and observed the consequences of my country’s 1996 transition from FPTP voting to the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system, I am not convinced that our proportional system of voting has resulted in better government here. As an example, after our October 2023 election, two minor parties (receiving 8.6% and 6% voter support), negotiated coalition agreements with a major party that had received 38% voter support. While a low polling candidate in his own electorate, one of the minor party candidates now holds two key ministerial portfolios in the coalition government. Although holding controversial views and clearly not popular in his own electorate, this one Member of Parliament has a grossly disproportionate influence on government policy. In effect, under proportional representation, in return for agreeing to support the larger party’s policies, minor parties can blackmail the predominant party into allowing the promotion of other policies that do not have popular support. The end result is that 9 public opinion polls conducted during the first 4 months of 2025 all show that the majority of New Zealanders are dissatisfied with our present coalition government.
I do have some suggestions as to democracy could be improved, but need a larger space than this box allows ...
I’m not sure why but the UK structure has always been kinder to smaller parties than the US :- there’s always been ~10% of seats going to not the top two, whether it’s greens, reform, ukip or Liberal Democrat.
Wow, just what Massachusetts needs right now, more Republican representation. Until both parties are sane, this approach does not work. Your discussion assumes that democracy in the US is still a given. That we just need to strengthen it. This is not the case. NO KINGS
Ok, I get that it doesn't seem like a way out of the current situation. But I think what the author is saying is, PR works like a pressure safety valve: let off a little steam here and there to prevent it building up and eventually blowing up the system.
Excellent. America needs more than two parties, and needs PR, open and non-partisan primaries, and no gerrymandering to get it. Tom Mast Congress is Vital
This piece uses Britain’s current political shake-up, where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is threatening to supplant the Conservatives, as a mirror for the United States. It argues that both countries suffer under winner-take-all (first-past-the-post) voting systems, which appear stable but are in fact brittle, exclusionary, and ripe for hijacking by populist extremists.
Rather than producing true multiparty democracy, disruptive third parties often either replace an existing major party or fracture votes, enabling the worst actors to win. That’s how Trump didn’t need to form a new party. He just cannibalized the GOP from within. Likewise, Farage isn’t making space for new voices; he’s just replacing the Tories with a more radical nationalist flavor.
WHY THIS MATTERS TO AMERICA:
Because it’s our own damn future in preview. If we don’t fix our rigged two-party system, we’re setting the stage for another authoritarian, maybe smarter and slicker than Trump, to seize control using the same outdated party infrastructure. And once they have the wheel, they don’t give it back.
But here’s the kicker: political collapse creates opportunity. In both countries, there’s a narrow window where coalitions of pro-democracy actors could actually change the system. Not just the players. The rules. By shifting to proportional representation, we could break the toxic two-party doom loop and build a truly representative democracy.
It’s not utopian. It’s basic democratic hygiene. And if we don’t do it before the next rupture, we’ll be stuck picking between tyrants and enablers. Again.
Proportional representation does not work, but democracy does need major redesign!
As a 78 year old New Zealander who has lived through and observed the consequences of my country’s 1996 transition from FPTP voting to the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system, I am not convinced that our proportional system of voting has resulted in better government here. As an example, after our October 2023 election, two minor parties (receiving 8.6% and 6% voter support), negotiated coalition agreements with a major party that had received 38% voter support. While a low polling candidate in his own electorate, one of the minor party candidates now holds two key ministerial portfolios in the coalition government. Although holding controversial views and clearly not popular in his own electorate, this one Member of Parliament has a grossly disproportionate influence on government policy. In effect, under proportional representation, in return for agreeing to support the larger party’s policies, minor parties can blackmail the predominant party into allowing the promotion of other policies that do not have popular support. The end result is that 9 public opinion polls conducted during the first 4 months of 2025 all show that the majority of New Zealanders are dissatisfied with our present coalition government.
I do have some suggestions as to democracy could be improved, but need a larger space than this box allows ...
I’m not sure why but the UK structure has always been kinder to smaller parties than the US :- there’s always been ~10% of seats going to not the top two, whether it’s greens, reform, ukip or Liberal Democrat.
Wow, just what Massachusetts needs right now, more Republican representation. Until both parties are sane, this approach does not work. Your discussion assumes that democracy in the US is still a given. That we just need to strengthen it. This is not the case. NO KINGS
Ok, I get that it doesn't seem like a way out of the current situation. But I think what the author is saying is, PR works like a pressure safety valve: let off a little steam here and there to prevent it building up and eventually blowing up the system.
Comments on ranked-choice voting? Thank you.
the article emphasizes multi-member districts and that is the backbone of any PR.
no one group can take all the seats in a district. (unlike FPTP where only one group, and not even the majority in many cases, takes the one seat.)
STV merely takes the MMDs and single voting, and adds ranked votes to make transferable votes.
single-winner ranked voting (instant-runoff voting) does not give proportional results any more than FPTP does.
about best that is guaranteed under IRV is something more than 50 percent of votes are used to actually elect someone.
while under PR it is more like 80 to 90 percent, or more, are actually used to elect someone.
under FPTP, as little as 17 or 18 percent are used to actually elect the winner in a single-member district.
yes, 17.38 percent was all that elected the winner -- this actually happened in one ward in the Toronto 2014 election.
with single voting in MMD as the base you do not actually require votes to mark back-up preferences (ranked votes) to get fairness.
STV's vote transfers rarely change more than 10 percent of those in winning positions in the first round.
but that first round is very different from the results under FPTP.