Protect Democracy has issued a scholarly report titled “Advantaging Authoritarianism: The U.S. Electoral System & Antidemocratic Extremism.” Scholars involved with the report are Arend Lijphart, Jack Santucci, Jennifer Gandhi, Larry Diamond, Lee Drutman, Yascha Mounk, and Cynthia McClintock.
The paper says “This paper does not advocate for any specific suites of reforms”, but does recommend ranked choice voting, proportional representation, multi-member districts, and enlarging the size of the U.S. House. The report points out that the U.S. House has more constituents per member than any other lower-chamber legislative body in the world, except for India.
The report notes that the U.S. is the only nation that forces parties to choose their nominees in government-administered primaries, but it does not suggest that the U.S. switch to the common world standard of letting parties choose their own nominees through their own meetings. The report does suggest the U.S. primaries would be improved if ranked choice voting were used in primaries. Thanks to Michael Drucker for the link to the report.
NOOOO primaries
PR legis
APPV exec/judic
TOTSOP
Ranked choice voting is good for the final election, because it can determine if there is an actual majority for any candidate in a multi-candidate election.
But, IMO, approval voting would be better in any primaries that may be held, however organized, because approval voting is more likely to find the candidates with the broadest support, and who should thus advance to the final round.
IMO, the best way to implement multi member districts is by having Congress require that House districts have a minimum geographic size. This would mean in practice, that metropolitan areas would produce multi-member districts, while rural areas would tend to remain as single member districts, which would probably be best for them, because rural voters would feel too alienated if their reps are too far away from them.
A minimum size of 1,000 square miles, almost the size of Rhode Island, currently the smallest state, could be a good place to start.
@DR,
What good does a PR legislature do when you have a singular executive in a Total Separation of Powers. The executive will simply grab more power.