‘Proportional representation’ could reduce polarization in Congress and help more people feel like their voices are being heard

In the face of widespread pessimism about the political fate of the United States and growing political polarization, scholars and citizens across the country are reimagining how American democracy could better serve the needs of the whole population.

In an October 2025 poll, a slight majority said that radical change is needed to make life better in America, compared to 32% who answered only small change is needed.

Reimagining a political system’s future effectively begins with the system’s foundation: how the populace chooses the people who will represent them and make collective decisions.

The U.S. Constitution mandates elected representatives in Congress to decide important questions, such as how to tax the population and spend that collective revenue. And they determine whether to go to war or to defend allies if they are invaded.

These representatives are chosen in a winner-take-all system that research shows favors those with money to spend on the race. It also feeds stark polarization, helps restrict choice to two major parties and leaves out the voices of many voters.

What would it take to make that electoral system become more responsive to citizens’ needs? How could it be fairer and more accurate in representing the entire electorate?

One answer is found in proportional representation, an electoral system used in most of the rest of the world’s established democracies. These systems elect multiple representatives in a district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them.

A recent report from the Academy of Arts and Sciences that I participated in analyzed the pros and cons of moving to such a system.

It examined evidence from other countries and concluded that proportional representation could provide more fair and accurate representation and more choice. Proportional representation could also help with the deep political polarization engulfing the United States.

This proposal would change the way Americans elect representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives and potentially to state legislatures.

Currently, the winner-take-all system in the U.S. works like this: States are divided into districts based on population and elect one representative to the House of Representatives per district. The winner is the person who gets the most votes. Most states also use this single-member district system to elect members of their state legislatures.

A proportional representation system has larger, multimember districts. Candidates are elected according to the share of votes they or their parties receive.

Different versions of proportional list systems exist. In one version called open list proportional representation, voters choose a candidate from party lists of nominated candidates or from lists of independent candidates.

So if the Good People Party, for example, wins 40% of the vote in a district with 10 members, it will get four seats. And the top four vote-winners on their list will be elected. If the Serious People Party wins 20% of the vote, it will get two seats, with the top two vote-getters on their list elected.

This method simultaneously serves the purpose of a primary election, allowing voters to choose among nominees from a party.

Another version of proportional representation also has multimember districts but uses ranked-choice voting to select the members, where voters rank candidates in order of preference. New Zealand and Australia changed to this system for some of their representative bodies in 1993 and 1948, respectively.

The advantages of proportional representation include outcomes where many more voters would live in a district with at least one of the elected officials representing their choice. That differs from the winner-take-all system where those on the losing side feel unrepresented, especially when the district is split 51% to 49%, for example.

Proportional representation opens the door to more choice because it becomes possible for a smaller party to win one seat out of five, for example. It would begin to break up the two-party system that currently forces some voters to choose the “lesser of two evils,” or to vote strategically against their most disliked party rather than for someone they want.

Proportional representation also eliminates gerrymandering because voters would not be split into small, easily manipulated district boundaries. Proportional representation, additionally, has been shown to give more equal representation to minorities and women.

To be sure, proportional representation can lead to difficulty in forming a majority coalition. This happened in Belgium in 2010. It can also lead to situations where small, extremist parties can demand major concessions to join a larger party in forming a majority coalition, which Israel recently experienced.

Israel is often cited as a negative example of proportional representation. But the country remains unusual in that its extreme electoral system includes the entire country as one large district with 120 seats, so that many small parties can be elected.

Research indicates that districts with three to eight members are ideal to provide more accurate representation without overly fragmenting the party system.

In the U.S. it’s more likely that proportional representation would allow for different factions of the existing parties to be represented. Imagine a five-seat district that elects one MAGA Republican, one traditional Republican, one progressive Democrat, one centrist Democrat and one third-party or independent candidate. This would begin to break down the polarization and allow for different coalitions to form across different issues.

Changing the system to elect House members does not require a constitutional amendment. The Constitution allows states to determine the manner of elections.

But Congress would need to repeal a 1967 law that mandates single-member districts, written to help implement the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Southern states that had used a bloc system to disenfranchise Black voters.

In a bloc system, voters get as many votes as there are seats in that district. So in a five-seat district, each voter gets five votes instead of only one vote in a proportional system. A majority group, say whites, could thus choose to vote for only white candidates and win across the board, locking out any minority candidate from winning. The repeal could include a prohibition on returning to that bloc system.

Proportional representation would require that lawmakers who hold their seats under the current system agree to change the 1967 law. And they may be reluctant to change to a system that would give voters more choice.

But interviews with retiring lawmakers show their frustration with the dysfunction and toxicity of the current Congress. And some lawmakers are pushing for a committee to study how changes to the electoral system could create a better-functioning Congress.

Additionally, there is growing support for electoral reform in the U.S. A September 2024 poll found that over half of Americans think the U.S. should change the way we elect representatives to Congress. And 63% believe the country would be better off with more than two competitive parties.

One U.S. city – Portland, Oregon – recently moved to proportional representation. The Portland City Council that took office in 2025 has greater gender, minority and neighborhood representation than in the past, even if it experienced some initial difficulty in forming a majority coalition. And Cambridge, Massachusetts, has used proportional representation since 1941, where 95% of voters see one of their top three choices elected.

States and municipalities could thus become laboratories of innovation, experimenting with different versions of proportional representation and providing models and momentum for a national-level change. And the country could begin not only to reimagine but to experience a different democracy that serves all.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jennifer Lynn McCoy, Georgia State University

Jennifer Lynn McCoy receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation for an Andrew Carnegie fellowship on depolarization as well as the Institute for Humane Studies.. She is Regent's Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.