TL;DR: With FPTP, each belligerent tries to form the smallest winning coalition, resulting in a near even split two-party system.
Proportional Representation is the remedy for assemblies, councils, houses.
Approval voting is the remedy for executive races (eg sheriff, mayor, governor).
Additional benefits of both PR and Approval Voting:
- no more primaries
- fewer elections means reduced voter fatigue
- increased turnout, because real competition boosts participation
- greatly reduces mudslinging, because everyone wants to be your second choice
- no more spoilers, making an incubator for third parties
You may think for various reasons that it's better to form coalitions at one level of the voting process than the other, but let's not pretend PR avoids it.
The reason why we have so many bills falling through is because of the razor thin margins in the Senate, so that a few dissenters can affect things. But if you look at how votes in legislature went down historically, we're pretty much at peak partisanship - it used to be a lot more common for congressmen to vote across party lines.
There are many other accounts, giving different perspectives, of course. The Politics of Attention and Unorthodox Lawmaking come to mind.
> The difference is that legislative coalitions don't have to be permanent, the way parties are.
Just like the parties that make up a legislative coalitions can change, the voters making up a political party can and do change.
> Various factions in the legislature can come together for a particular bill, or series of bills on some issue that's relevant to them all. But on something else, they might realign differently
This happens all the time on individual bills in a two-party systems as well. ("Crossing the aisle".) But the coalitions forming control of the legislative body rarely change except immediately following elections (in both PR and two-party systems).
> Also, even when coalitions are more persistent, the terms are effectively renegotiated every election - party platforms are much more stable.
The analog of a particular legislative coalitions in a two-party system is not a particular party but the party in power. And the platform of the party in power changes dramatically when power shifts from one party to another.
Some PR countries have strong two party systems (see most obviously Malta).
There is something additional in America that causes a two party system which may or may not continue past a switch to PR because we don't know what it is.
Also, it is good to specify your goals. You might want to make it easier for unconnected people to enter the assembly, or to make it easier to throw out the choice of the primary voters, or literally just a more fragmented assembly. It is easier to come up with useful compromises if you specify your specific objectives because not every system of PR will have any of those goals. Closed list PR with primaries is probably the antithesis of what you want, but it's an extremely common kind and what a lot of people hear when you say "PR".
Over simplistically:
#1 - Our FPTP elections leads to two major parties.
#2 - Our gerrymandered districts (local, state, congressional) has led to increased partisanship. As noted elsewhere, because contests are won during the low-turnout primaries where the motivated base participates.
#3 - Ever increasing campaign costs has led to concentrated influence (power law distribution of attention). Who ever controls the contributions controls the agenda.
#4 - We have city, district, county, state, federal elections. The party system starts at the bottom. Memories are long and defections are never forgiven (eg Nader & Green Party).
Having now done it... Everyone should run for office, at least once. Because most commentary, complaining isn't even wrong.
My goal, always, is to empower, enfranchise people. The various reforms I support increase voter choice and participation. At every level by various (sometimes non-intuitive) means.
I wrote something about this. https://asitoughttobe.com/2010/07/18/score-voting/
All to say that, while different methods for representation should absolutely be considered and discussed, it's important to remember that none of these are a panacea, and we should be upfront about the nuances and disadvantages of every option.
Well, other than that more proportional results, by whatever means, seem consistently across modern democracies to provide government with which the people are more satisfied, and also provide a higher dimensionality to the range of political ideas and debate. (See Lijphart’s Patterns of Democracy.)
Every options has positive and negative traits, but single-member FPTP districts are about the worst, on balance.
Well, worst would be that plus having districts that don't even try to have similar population, so that the results are even less proportional than you'd expect with FPTP in single-member districts.
The solution to that, however politically difficult, is to break the larger states into smaller ones. New York City, for example, shares very little politically or economically with the rest of New York. Similarly with the various regions of California -- Silicon Valley and Los Angeles are as different from each other as both are from the areas north of San Francisco.
If a liberal state does it, it costs liberals votes. If a conservative state does it, it costs conservatives votes. It seems pretty clear that such a system is fairer, and yet no-one wants to actually do it.
> As shown above, in 1804 each Representative represented approximately 40 thousand people. Today, the average population of congressional districts is nearly 700 thousand and growing.
> In order to restore the House to the citizenry, our total number of federal Representatives will have to be increased substantially. Achieving this goal is essential to extending the ground of public confidence in our government and ensuring the beneficent ends of its institution.
It's doubtful whether that still exists as anything more than a foil/justification though, given Congress's expansion was stopped a century back, and each Representatives now stands in for at least half a million people (RH has the lowest number of citizens per rep' at 530k) and up to a million (Montana, population 1042520, currently has a single rep'), with the average closing in on 740k (up from ~710 during the last census).
Can a rep' really vouch for the specific needs of 700000 people any more than a proportional delegation would?
It's unclear to me that the House of Commons manages to do that, and they've got 650 MPs for 65 million people (or ~100000 people per MP on average, though the average electorate is lower, and it has very extreme low ends, Na h-Eileanan an Iar has an electorate of under 22k).
[]: I don't mean to say FPTP is undemocratic - Canada is plainly democratic - just that America isn't democratic in much the same way one says Russia isn't democratic. If the government is intent on not hearing the will of the people, it will find a way.
Not if they establish their own parties.