Department of Good Stuff: How to have better legislative elections

When you combine single-member districts into bigger multi-member districts, the picture starts to look quite different. The beauty of multi-member districts is that they allow us to use what FairVote calls “fair representation voting.”

...Imagine if Netroots Democrats or Tea Party Republicans made an impact not by launching primary challenges but by setting up shop as separate political entities. Instead of dragging the major parties to the left or to the right, they’d be able to compete with them on a level playing field. It’d be a bit like the startup world, where venture-backed entrepreneurs routinely take on entrenched incumbents. - Reihan Salam, executive editor of the National Review