There’s a spectrum of ways to reform the House using proportional representation. Two key factors are how many representatives a multi-member district would have and how winners of House seats would be proportionally allocated.
In 2021, Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia led a group of other House Democrats in reintroducing a proposal that’s been floating around Congress since 2017. The Fair Representation Act would require states to use ranked choice voting for House races. It calls for states with six or more representatives to create districts with three to five members each, and states with fewer than six representatives to elect all of them as at-large members of one statewide district.
You would rank them once.
If we were taking the top 5 candidates in a FPTP election, once a candidate receives 16.66% of the vote they would be guaranteed to get a seat because it’s impossible for 5 other candidates to also have at least 16.66% of the vote. So the election threshold in this election is 16.66%. In general when selecting n winners, it is 1 / (n+1).
The scoring takes place in rounds and every round either a candidate will earn a seat or a candidate will be removed (votes can be reallocated to them in later rounds so they’re not permanently out).
When a candidate exceeds the election threshold they win a seat and their excess votes are then redistributed to the other candidates. Suppose Rep1 wins the first round by 1 million votes over the election threshold. Their excess votes are redistributed based on what the voters’ next preferred candidate is. E.g. Of the voters who voted for Rep1, 70% had Rep2 as their next choice and 30% had Rep3 as their next choice. So Rep2 earns 700,000 votes and Rep3 earns 300,000 votes. Then the next round of scoring begins.
If no candidate reaches the election threshold that round, the votes from the lowest scoring candidate are eliminated and their votes are redistributed based on the voters’ next choice similar to how the excess votes from a winner are redistributed (except now it’s 100% of their votes). Then onto the next round.
If we assume that everyone votes down party lines, then every time votes are redistributed (whether because a seat was won or because a candidate was eliminated that round) the votes would only be redistributed to someone of their same party. If Democrats have 33% of the vote, then when a Republican wins a seat the excess votes just get redistributed to other Republicans. When a Democrat candidate is removed from a round their votes just go to the next Democrat candidates. The Republicans aren’t taking away any of the Democrats’ slice of the pie. Inside that blue slice there might be several rounds of shuffling votes around until one of them reaches the election threshold but none of the Democrat votes would ever get redistributed to the Republicans.
The biggest problem with ranked choice voting is that it always takes several paragraphs of explanation. Its like someone explaining a board game. .at some point, let’s just play and we’ll figure it out.
It takes explaining to understand exactly how it gives us better results, but the rules for the “players” are simple, just pick your first preference, second preference, and so on for all candidates. Probably simpler than tic tac toe.
Also I learned how ranked choice voting works from a 2-3 minute youtube video, and it was explained in a way that middle schoolers could understand.