The Daily Northwestern, a daily newspaper published by students at Northwestern University, has this op-ed advocating that the U.S. use proportional representation for congressional elections. The paper is considered one of the best student newspapers in the nation, and it also serves as the only daily newspaper for Evanston, Illinois.
The author only presents one type of proportional representation. Also he says constitutions would need to be changed. It may be true that some state constitutions would need amendments, but nothing in the U.S. Constitution blocks proportional representation for Congress. States are free, under the Constitution, to elect members of Congress any way they wish, as long as they are chosen by popular vote. However, a federal law mandating single-member U.S. House districts would need to be changed. A bill will be introduced in Congress to repeal that law.
Party list systems are no good and it appears that the author is advocating such a system also used in Israel and Germany, it is known as a D’Hont method.
If you’d like exact representation which includes independents and concerned outsiders who are not hand-picked by insider party bosses and their lists then you may want to check out pure proportional representation under the Hagen-Bach Biscoff method where the results are calibrated across the board up or down to fill all the open seats with the exact same thrshold to all.
This is a system which includes both party lists and independents.
The USA Parliament has been using pure proportional representation for more than 20 consecutive years and it works fine.
http://www.usparliament.org
Now visit the new International Parliament which also uses pure PR and become a team player with us on the USA and International Parliament United Coalition.