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America's winner-take-all electoral system has its problems. Proportional representation might fix them.

Left Party whip Keith Ellison spoke in Washington today in an attempt to rally centrist support for tighter financial regulationhis liberal coalition has support on the issue from Tea Party leader Steve King, but without more Democrats and Republicans the bill is doomed to fail. Leaders of the Green Party have yet to take a stance on the bill but

Wait, what?

This might sound absurd in the United States, but its not as crazy elsewhere in the world. The American system of government is stable, popular, and backed by the Constitutionand dominated by two political parties. A political system comprised of multiple, smaller parties and shifting coalitions may be unimaginable in America, but its the norm in most other democracies. While the United States is one of the worlds oldest democracies, and spreading democracy is a central tenet of the countrys foreign policy, our winner-take-all system itself is among our least-popular exports. In Western Europe, 21 of 28 countries use a form of proportional representation in at least one type of election.

What is proportional representation, or PR? Its a system that aims to gives parties the same percentage of seats as the percentage of votes they receiveand it might be able to end our gerrymandering wars.

Every ten years, state officials are charged with redrawing district maps to account for population shifts in the Census. In practice, incumbent lawmakers often turn into cartographers with the power to change maps to suit their needs. The problem is epigrammatic: Rather than voters choosing their legislators, legislators are choosing their voters. Thats how you get districts that look like Marylands third congressional district, pictured below:

The word gerrymandering is a blend of Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerrys name and his Democratic-Republican Partys 1812 creation of a salamander-shaped district. Experts, like my colleague Garrett Epps, blame the distorting process for part of the current disconnect in some states between a states voters and their representatives. After the 2010 Census, a bevy of Republican state legislatures packed Democratic voters into lopsided throwaway districts, usually in urban centers. The problem has been especially acute in swing states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Democrats have replied by splitting liberal suburbs like Montgomery County, Maryland, into several smaller districts where they hold a slight advantage, but Republicans are still winning this political game at the moment: In 2012, Democratic House candidates received more votes nationwide than Republicansand Republicans won a 33-seat majority.

The most commonly prescribed fix for gerrymandering is using a bipartisan commission to draw congressional districts. Six states currently use commissions whose members are appointed by political leaders from both parties, while California goes a step further, selecting commission members from a pool of bipartisan voters. Iowa uses a non-partisan, independent agency and has achieved some of the most competitive races in the country.

Do these commissions work? Yes, to some extent. A New York Times analysis found that states where courts, commissions or divided governments drew the maps found a much smaller disparity between the share of the popular vote and the number of seats won in Congress. But there are limitations to their effectiveness. In 2010, California Democrats were able to hijack the 2010 redistricting process to protect their partys incumbents. Arizona and New Jersey dont limit committee members future political activities, and the Supreme Court may soon decide whether Arizona citizens ever actually had the right to take the map-drawing process out of the legislatures hands. Whats more, Americans increasingly sort themselves by political affiliation: Liberals tend to live in cities, while conservatives are most prevalent in rural areas. Even with good, non-partisan intentions, its getting harder to draw single-member districts that get a partys seat share to approximate its statewide vote share.

Thats where PR could come in. In PR, each party wins seats in proportion to its support. Israel elects all 120 members of its national legislature from a single multi-member district that encompasses the entire country, and the Netherlands does the same with its lower house. But districts that large can lead to over-representation of fringe parties who receive just a small percentage of the vote, as well as giving numerous tiny parties the ability to make outsized demands from big parties if they lack a majority. So larger countries often break themselves down into smaller districts to ensure legislators have some connection to a particular geographic area.

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