Proportional Representation Voting

Comments discuss proportional representation, mixed-member proportional systems, and other electoral reforms as solutions to gerrymandering, two-party dominance, and underrepresentation in first-past-the-post systems.

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US IMO thenation.com NZ FTPT wikipedia.org RCV MMP PR FPP proportional districts representation voting vote district party seats voters representatives

Sample Comments

tryptophan Aug 21, 2019 View on HN

We could implement a proportional representation system, which would make sure that their voices are represented in a far way. If people vote 30/60/10 for parties A/B/C, 30/60/10% of candidates elected would be of that party. Now its more like 45/55/0 or some other random result, based on gerrymandering.

taylodl Feb 26, 2025 View on HN

Are you familiar with Duverger's Law? The "system" doesn't require an overhaul, but how we vote, does.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law

karatinversion Sep 24, 2021 View on HN

Sounds like proportional representation working as intended?

Aaron2222 Jan 26, 2023 View on HN

Have a look at Mixed Member Proportional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...

beisner Jul 5, 2018 View on HN

One of the better ways I’ve heard is multi-member districting, where you have a slightly larger district with multiple reps (maybe 3-5 representatives) where seats are partitioned proportionately for that district. Voters vote for a party, and seats are apportioned to each party in accordance with their share (with some rounding). This guarantees a result that is at least as proportional (I’d posit significantly more proportional) as the current representative system, and maintain the ‘theoretic

kohlerm May 12, 2022 View on HN

Do I miss something,but isn't the real solution for this to elect using proportional representation?

082349872349872 Nov 19, 2023 View on HN

Would proportional representation help?

brianolson Dec 21, 2018 View on HN

The abstract describes a system for achieving shoddy Proportional Representation through bipartisan (or multi-partisan) gerrymandering. If you want Proportional Representation, then just do that and don't try to gerrymander districts to achieve it. I think this country is too stuck on the notion of districts and needs to think outside the box and paint outside the lines (nyuks intended). I think we keep describing what we want as some sort of identity/ideology based representation and

lmkg Nov 28, 2012 View on HN

Not a local, but... Proportional voting systems suffer from the problem that voting "power" is not proportional to representation.Consider a parliament with 100 members and 3 parties. Suppose the breakdown is: A has 49 members, B has 48 members, and C has 3 members. Guess what... A, B, and C all have equal voting power! Any two parties are enough to reach a majority of 51 votes, and any one party is not. Despite A having, in theory, over 16 times the representation of C, it does not have any

Schroedingersat Jan 26, 2023 View on HN

Proportional representation solves this problem.Each state has x districts drawn by an independent third party which must pass a certain threshold for compactness, and y seats not associated with a district.Via any mechanism you choose (preference, ranked choice, FPP with parties, whatever) votes are assigned. Any voter in one of the x districts that does not get representation from their local member has their vote flow to one of the y seats.The exact implementations have tradeoffs, bu