Proportional Representation

Proportional representation is an electoral system in which seats in a legislature are allocated to parties in proportion to their share of the vote. It is used in most European democracies and in a small number of American local elections.

Proportional representation, often abbreviated PR, comes in many varieties, but the basic idea is consistent. If a party wins twenty percent of the vote, it receives roughly twenty percent of the seats. The party then assigns its seats to candidates from a list. Some systems use a single national list. Others divide the country into multi-member districts and run proportional elections within each district. Mixed systems combine single-member districts with proportional allocations to balance representation. PR tends to produce multi-party legislatures. Small parties can win seats even without ever placing first in a particular district, and voters are not pressured to abandon their preferred party for fear of "wasting" their vote. The result, in most countries that use PR, is coalition government. No single party usually wins a majority. Multiple parties must negotiate to form a governing coalition. American legislatures have used proportional representation only sparingly. A handful of cities, including Cambridge, Massachusetts and several others using ranked-choice voting, allocate council seats in something resembling a proportional way. Federal elections and most state elections use single-member districts. Proposals to adopt PR have surfaced in every generation. Supporters argue that it produces legislatures that more accurately reflect the spectrum of public opinion and that it reduces the distortions of gerrymandering. Critics argue that it weakens the link between a representative and a specific geographic constituency and that coalition governments can be unstable. The American constitutional system does not require single-member districts at the state level, and several states could adopt proportional systems if they chose. None has so far.