Choice Voting is a form of proportional representation (PR) that is widely used by the world's established democracies. Under choice voting, representatives are elected from multi-seat districts in proportion to the number of votes received. Choice voting also assures that political parties or candidates will gain the percentage of legislative seats that reflects their public support.
Winner-take-all elections box voters into simplistic red and blue divisions that poorly reflect our diversity of views. They turn most state legislative and congressional elections into "no-choice" contests. Only a handful of swing states will get attention from presidential candidate.
Choice voting is a proportional voting system where voters maximize the effectiveness of their vote by ranking candidates in multi-seat constituencies.
Looking at the most robust democracies in the world, it's clear that proportional representation is the preferred method to elect members of national legislatures.
Of the nations that don't use PR to elect representative in their most powerful national legislative body, only three countries (US, Ghana, and Canada) don't use it for at least one of their national elections.
On April 24, t two moderate Blue Dog Democrats, Tim Holden and Jason Altmire, lost in Pennsylvania's primary election. They are the latest examples of an accelerating "no-more-moderates" trend within both major parties. But fair representation of the left, right and center is essential to the health of a democracy. Grounded in its unique the-rules-matter perspective, FairVote explores how winner-take-all voting rules today disadvantage candidates willing to seek bipartisan solutions to problems.
See more maps like this in FairVote's Mapping American Democracy series.
