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Party List Proportional Representation in lieu of single member, first past the post districting, for the United States House of Representatives

Safiel

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This map, which I found on reddit, purports to show a reasonable facsimile of results if party list proportional representation had been used in the 2022 midterm elections instead of first past the post, single member districts.

It does not account for districts which were not contested in the general election and so cannot be fully accurate, but I still think it gives a reasonable approximation of the results.

The actual result in 2022 was 222 Republican to 213 Democrat.

The map gives a result of 220 Republican, 212 Democrat, 1 Libertarian (Texas), 1 Conservative (New York) and 1 Working Families (New York). (Assuming the Libertarian & Conservative caucus with the Republicans and the Working Families caucus with the Democrats, you have the exact same OVERALL result.)

But the State distribution is vastly different. Republicans gain substantially more seats in Democratic States, while Democrats gain substantially more seats in Republican States.

For example, Republicans gain three seats in Massachusetts where they currently have none. Republicans and Democrats evenly split the Oregon delegation. Georgia and North Carolina split evenly.

Citizens are better represented in their own States. For example, Republicans are completely locked out in Massachusetts right now, but would have three seats with proportional representation. Both Republicans and Democrats do much better in most States.

And because members no longer have safe seats, but must compete both to get ON a party list and to get a HIGH number on a party list, followed by the parties having to compete to get the highest vote percentage possible, they would no longer have the option of being obstinate asses. If a party fails, it is going to lose votes and since there is no gerrymandering to protect them, they will lose seats.

Getting the public business done, even if it requires cooperation and compromise, will be paramount for a party trying to hold a plurality or majority in the House.

Also, with time, it will lead to a true multi-party system. In New York, in 2022, the split was 15 D to 11 R. With proportional representation, the split would have be 14 D, 10 R, 1 Libertarian, 1 Working Families. A vote for a third party is not a wasted vote, because ranked choice voting would exist if the third party did not reach the floor for representation.

This could be implemented by Congressional legislation, no Constitutional amendment is needed. In fact, many States used multi-member districts or at large districts prior to Congress mandating single member districts. Congress can simple mandate an end to Congressional districts and impose a requirement that party list proportional representation be used.

The most wonderful thing about this is that the AMERICAN people and the AMERICAN people alone would decide how many seats each party gets. NEITHER party would be able to cheat (gerrymander).
 
Proportional representation also has it's own 'quirks' that need to be considered as well. It can give rise to smaller, single focus style parties who can end up in the 'king maker' position even though they only gain a small percentage of the overall vote. Upside is that this will force discussion on issues that might otherwise be ignored. Downside is that these small parties, representing few people, get to force through their preferred single issue legislation against the public good because they end up horse trading their voting support for other legislation.
 
You don't have to do that to avoid partisan gerrymandering.

California redistricting 101: What you need to know

An FAQ for voters on California redistricting as the state's independent commission works on preliminary congressional and legislative maps.
calmatters.org
 

The solution to this is establishing a minimum necessary percentage to gain representation. Just high enough to screen out single issue parties and extremist parties, but to allow for more viable broad based third parties.

And I agree, I do want to avoid a situation such as they have in Israel, where the relatively small Ultra-Orthodox parties can basically enforce their will on Israel because they control the balance of power.
 
I think the best system is mixed-member proportional, which is what they have in Germany and New Zealand. You're able to vote for a specific district representative, and you're also able to vote for which party you want to be in charge. After seating the district-level winners, at-large representatives from the party list are then added until each party has the correct proportion of the total.
 

I would be willing to consider that, as long as the end result is that each party's seat percentage matches its overall vote percentage.
 

The problem with single member first past the post systems is that even it is done benevolently, there will always be inequity because the population is not distributed homogenously.

But the other problem is that, even when done benevolently, very few voters truly have a say in the partisan balance of power.

I never have a say, as I live in a deep red district.

Many other voters never have a say, as they live in deep blue districts.

It is has already been determined for me that my representative will be a Republican and it has been determined for other voters that their representative will be a Democrat.

Party list proportional representation solves these problems and ensures that EVERY VOTER'S vote counts equally and that every voter's vote helps determine the partisan balance of power.
 
Independent commissions goal is to create as many competitive districts as possible. If you live in a blue state, you are still more likely to have a blue Rep, but the elections should be competitive.

Two questions about proportional voting. How are the winning reps decided, and what about the loss of local representation?
 

But again, even if redistricting is done in the most benevolent manner possible across every State, the fact is that there will be very few truly competitive districts. Ideally, all 435 districts would be tossup, but that is impossible due to population distribution. A fundamental flaw of single member, first past the post.

Each party would choose its list internally, in such manner as they see fit. The list would be published at least 30 days prior to the general election. Each candidate would occupy a numbered spot. The lower your number, the better your chance of entering Congress.

For example, Florida has 28 representatives. Each major party would present a list larger than the highest number of seats they hope to win. Republicans might count on winning 54% of the vote and thus 54% of the seats or 15 of 28. They would likely send up a list of at least 20, accounting both for the maximum number of seats they hope to win and a few alternate Representatives. Assume they finish at about 54% and win those 15 seats. The first 15 members of the party list would enter Congress. The remaining 5 would be alternates in case a member died, resigned or was expelled. There would be no special elections to replace members.

This also allows for "removal of the whip." If a member is being defiant or causing trouble for the party, the party can remove the whip, basically expelling him from the party conference and ensuring he will not be on any future party lists.

As for loss of local representation, I see that as a feature, not a flaw. Many of our problems come from parochialism. Local members spend much time lobbying for local pork, such as military bases, defense contractors, etc. This helps with that problem.

Parties could work together to maintain constituent service offices in towns around the State where they already exist. They could simply hiring staffers in partisan proportion to the number of seats each party won in the State. Constituent services would still exist, they simply would no longer be associated with or run by a particular representative.
 
In states where there is a dominant political party not all districts would be competitive. Changing to proportional representation would require a Constitutional amendment. Fixing representation among the states requires amending a law.

Assuming a D controlled govt, this is how to do it.
1-Eliminate the filibuster. It is undemocratic and we already have plenty of undemocratic operations baked into the Constitution. It also protects elected officials from having to cast votes exposing their positions.
2-Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico.
3-Amend the Permanent Reapportionment Act of 1929.
 

I disagree with the bolded.

Essentially, the change from single member first past the post to party list proportional representation is a change from single member districts to a single at large district. Prior to Congress mandating single member districts, some States used at large districting, in some cases general ticket voting.

This can be done with simple legislation, no constitutional amendment required.

I do support abolition of the filibuster.

I oppose statehood for the District of Columbia and would support retrocession to Maryland instead, as was done with the Virginia portion of the District.

I support a binding referendum be held in Puerto Rico with two questions as follows:

1. Do you support Statehood or Independence for Puerto Rico? (The voter would have the two choices of Statehood or Independence ONLY.)

2. If Independence wins in the previous question, do you wish Puerto Rico to execute Articles of Free Association with the United States? (Yes or No.)

If Independence wins, Independence would be granted within five years.

If Statehood wins, the President would be required to immediately issue a proclamation admitting Puerto Rico to the Union and Puerto Rico would be immediately required to hold elections for Senators and Representatives.

I would repeal the Permanent Apportionment Act and set the size of the House of Representatives as the whole odd number nearest the cube root of the census population of the United States, which I believe for 2020 would have been 693.
 
1. Keep the filibuster. Democrats will, like now, from time to time be the minority party. The filibuster works toward building consensus and against unsurmountable majority rule. Modify or tweak the rule but leave it in place.

2. No statehood ever for DC. To create the nation's first city-state begs the question, why not New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago or any city with a population dwarfing DC's 702,250? Why could they not argue with validity that immersive state control fails to adequately represent their unique circumstances?

The U.S. exercises control to varying degrees of 5 commonwealths and 14 territories. I suppose any or all of them would be candidates for statehood, if they sought it.

3 In what way would you amend the Permanent Reapportionment Act of 1929?
 

Good point. Germany, for example, deals with this by having a minimum threshold of votes required to get a party into the Bundestag.
 
Phys251 said:
Good point. Germany, for example, deals with this by having a minimum threshold of votes required to get a party into the Bundestag.
Click to expand...
New Zealand, where I now live, uses MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) voting. Each person gets a local representative vote, and a preferred party vote. The parliament is made up of the elected local representatives, plus a number of additional "Members of Parliament (MP's) that is determined by the proportion of Party votes each party receives. To get an MP into parliament, a party must either receive more than 5% of the Party votes, or have one of their members elected as the local representative for the district they run in.

What seems to happen most elections here is that the countries most extreme right leaning party gets an MP by running a candidate in the countries most 'conservative' district. The party doesn't ever seem to reach the 5% threshold, so mostly they only have that single MP. The countries most 'liberal' party will often get past the 5% point and hence get some MP's via the party votes, even if they can't win any seats by running in the various districts. End result though is that in a country that is very centric, there is often no clear winner between the major conservative and liberal parties, so these more extreme, fringe, parties end up becoming king maker coalition partners. Hence ending up with more influence on policy than their small numbers of supporters would suggest is right. That sometimes gives us policies that are really too extreme (left or right) for the majority of people.

It does sort of work better than FPTP IMO, but it's not without it's issues.
 

Without some kind of safeguard, kingmakers are always going to be an issue with a parliamentary system. It's not without its flaws.

But I'd take your system in a heartbeat over the corrupted and outdated system we have.
 
Phys251 said:
Without some kind of safeguard, kingmakers are always going to be an issue with a parliamentary system. It's not without its flaws.

But I'd take your system in a heartbeat over the corrupted and outdated system we have.
Click to expand...
Having lived in a number of different countries, it has become obvious to me, looking from the outside, how incredibly corrupt US politics has become, and even worse, how little Americans seem to care. If a politician here in NZ does something even a little morally wrong, even if not illegal, they probably are going to either get immediately fired by their party, or the voters will 'fire' them at the next election. Peoples expectations of their politicians behaviour here are so much higher than in the US. I really like to see it, and it really does make even the most minor forms of corruption incredibly rare.
 
I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that you include the Senate in proportional representation.

Retroceding DC would still leave the people that still live their without equal representation.

I would support PR deciding for themselves, but becoming a state would depend on Congress acting, not the President (at least until now).

693 sounds about right. Were you aware of why they chose 435 back in 1929? That was the number that the room could hold. They don't all need a desk, give them folding chairs for the amount of time they spend there.
 
And my reasoning for eliminating the filibuster remains the same if D's are in office. It is undemocratic, and it prevents senators from being forced to vote on certain issues.

Yes they could.

Eliminate the artificially low cap on the numbers of representatives. Constitutionally, it violates SCOTUS's Reynolds v Sims.
 
Thanks for that . . . for anyone who may be interested I lifted this portion from a case summary:

In an 8-to-1 decision authored by Justice Earl Warren, the Court upheld the challenge to the Alabama system, holding that Equal Protection Clause demanded "no less than substantially equal state legislative representation for all citizens...." Noting that the right to direct representation was "a bedrock of our political system," the Court held that both houses of bicameral state legislatures had to be apportioned on a population basis. States were required to "honest and good faith" efforts to construct districts as nearly of equal population as practicable.

[. . .]

Justice Harlan dissented, applying an originalist interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which in his opinion had not been meant by the drafters to protect voting rights. He suggested that the Court was intruding on federalism principles protecting the states in their control of local matters. -- from "Reynolds v. Sims." Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/1963/23. Accessed 18 Aug. 2025
 
I think it depends on the type and composition of the list. I would definitely be against a closed list system.
 
Proportional representation formulas necessarily set the stage for requiring formation of ruling government by coalition of different parties and that inherently is unstable and leads to constant breakdowns and elections as coalitions splinter and come and go.

Here is an article that warns of the above:

Proportional Representation Is Not the Answer to America’s Problems

The idea that the country’s political dysfunction can be fixed by embracing a new electoral system is a dangerous fantasy.
www.persuasion.community

Now not let us deal with the current reality. You might be able to move to a proportional system in the House of Reps but not the Senate because as the above article also points out:

"In elections for the House of Representatives, it is in theory possible to amalgamate a number of districts in order to create “multi-member” constituencies. But that is not possible in elections for the Senate. Since each state elects one Senator at any one time, the relevant constituencies only have a single member—making any form of proportionality unfeasible. And this means that voters who don’t want to waste their vote in Senate elections would once again be reduced to a choice between two serious candidates."

Then we have a problem with your Presidential election system. You can have as many candidates as you want running and find a way to detach this vote from the electoral college but then? Say you have 12 candidates. They necessarily will representative one of the many parties or be independent. How would things change?

I think the point is to reform the US system we really are talking about the current electoral college system. To change that would require unanimous consent of all state assembles, the US Senate and the House of Representatives amending the constitution. No one would ever agree on that.

Proportional representation us a form of Parliamentary election systems not electrical college ones like the US.
 

I am not proposing to apply proportional representation to the Electoral College or the Senate, just the House of Representatives. I support the abolition of the Electoral College and direct election of the President, not reform.

The Senate will unfortunately have to continue being the cluster **** it is for now.

But the House of Representatives can be reformed without constitutional change.

And proportional representation is perfectly compatible with a Presidential system, it is not restricted to parliamentary systems.

Parties can form a coalition for control of the House of Representatives and different parties might combine to pass legislation, the combination of parties depending on the nature of the legislation.
 
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