Is there a better way to get there in the United States?

In an old Irish joke, a lost traveler hollers to a farmer in a field for directions. The farmer ponders for a moment and then yells back, "If I was going there, I wouldn't start from here." For those of us who aim to make American democracy (and especially Congress and other legislative bodies) live up to their promise, the same droll advice seems to apply: Don't start from here.

Here (the status quo) seems FUBAR. Congress careening toward government shutdowns, mutual contempt between (and within) the party caucuses, legislative gridlock, gerrymandered districts, pervasive disinformation, whole committees that spend their time not governing but pandering to extremists on YouTube, hundreds of electeds who sane-wash the political violence of January 6, and withering public distrust for (even disgust with) politicians…all these dynamics make reform seem like a long shot (maybe even a moonshot). And the odds against amending the US Constitution make it seem like a cow-jumping-over-the-moon shot.

And yet here we are, and the destination is too important for us to give up. What are the directions to a better democracy?

Proportional representation is needed but unlikely

To chart our course forward, we need to know not only where here is but also where there is. What does better legislative democracy look like? In short, it looks like legislative bodies that can reliably and efficiently solve hard problems for the public, from stumbling school systems to a broken immigration regime, and from climate change to the national debt.

It looks like bodies that set priorities, digest the best available information, strike balances among competing values and interests, and negotiate complicated agreements among conflicting factions. At the federal level, it looks like a Congress that becomes, as intended by the framers, the first branch among equals, no longer subordinated to the judicial and executive branches by its own paralysis.

To achieve such outcomes, a growing body of reformers is assembling around the proposition that proportional representation (the way that legislative bodies in most of the world are chosen) is the gold standard. Proportional representation would unstick American lawmaking and thereby let Americans move forward toward the future they deserve. Unfortunately, it also has little chance of winning adoption soon---at least in its most common forms employed abroad.

Paths that go directly from here to proportional representation are daunting; in the best case, they will take decades.

On the other hand, a different electoral reform---an improved version of the existing and flawed US system of majoritarian elections---has intriguing possibilities. It's not proportional representation (in fact, it can seem like the opposite), but it is attainable now in many places, and somewhat surprisingly, it may prove the best way to accelerate the arrival of proportional representation.

This reform consists of upgrading existing elections to ranked choice voting, which is now used in Maine and on the ballot statewide in Oregon this November, or combining ranked choice voting with variants of unified (all-party, all-candidate), top-four primaries, which are now used in Alaska. In November, this latter reform is on the ballot in Nevada and may be on the ballot in Colorado, Idaho, and Montana.

In other words, if proportional representation is there, we shouldn't start from here. We should start by charting a fresh course down a recently blazed trail to ranked choice voting and unified top-four primaries.

Long story short, that's my conclusion; now I'll make the short story long.

Proportional representation is the ultimate destination

In political science literature, there is little contest: proportional representation is better. Compared with the current US system of winner-take-all races in single-member districts, proportional representation (a family of election methods that ens...