This advocates for proportional representation instead of winner-take-all for US federal legislative seats. Today, if a US House race ends 60%/40%, the 40% counts for zero. Instead:
> Now consider the alternative: What would happen if that same district were represented by not one House member but five. There would be multiple Democrats and Republicans vying for the five seats.
… with the results reflecting the actual electorate. In that 60%/40% example, 5 seats would yield 3 & 2 representatives.
> Most plans for multi-member districts also call for reducing the number of districts overall. For a state such as Virginia, for instance, that could mean moving from having 11 single-member districts to three — two with four representatives each and one with three. Such proposals also typically call for expanding the size of the House, which would allow congressional delegations to more closely reflect partisan splits in their states.
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> Parties also represent smaller slices of the electorate in multiparty systems, which incentivizes cross-party cooperation to create legislative majorities. This tends to foster moderation. “As a general rule, when a wider range of parties gets representation in the legislature, it’s hard to form a majority governing coalition that doesn’t include the political center,” Drutman wrote. As a result, moderate candidates are empowered and the extreme elements are banished to the fringe.
> Now consider the alternative: What would happen if that same district were represented by not one House member but five. There would be multiple Democrats and Republicans vying for the five seats.
… with the results reflecting the actual electorate. In that 60%/40% example, 5 seats would yield 3 & 2 representatives.
> Most plans for multi-member districts also call for reducing the number of districts overall. For a state such as Virginia, for instance, that could mean moving from having 11 single-member districts to three — two with four representatives each and one with three. Such proposals also typically call for expanding the size of the House, which would allow congressional delegations to more closely reflect partisan splits in their states.
…
> Parties also represent smaller slices of the electorate in multiparty systems, which incentivizes cross-party cooperation to create legislative majorities. This tends to foster moderation. “As a general rule, when a wider range of parties gets representation in the legislature, it’s hard to form a majority governing coalition that doesn’t include the political center,” Drutman wrote. As a result, moderate candidates are empowered and the extreme elements are banished to the fringe.
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