Pros And Cons Of Opportional Voting

There are multiple causes for concern regarding voting within this country. Our electoral system has a majoritarian rule system. This basically means that “Majoritarian Rule is a winner take all system; the party that obtains more votes wins under majority rules. On the other hand, proportional representation results in a more balanced sharing of political power” (Kartal, 2015). According to CNN, only 55.4% of all eligible voters turned out to vote in the last presidential election that is still technically being settled. For someone who considers themselves to be civic minded, this certainly throws up some red flags. With 44.6% of eligible voters not bothering to vote during a presidential election cycle, this leads me to believe that there …show more content…
With majority rules, some of the elections can be seen as unfair because you can get 51% of the vote and 100% of the representation, this is not the case with proportional representation. In a proportional representation, the votes that are cast will transform into seats won for each political party. This means that “Seat bonuses for larger parties are minimized, and small parties can have their voice heard in the legislature” (ACE Project Staff, 2006). Another advantage is that people no longer feel as though they have wasted their vote on a losing candidate, because as long as the candidate or party meets the required threshold then someone with a similar ideology will be representing them within the legislature. By allowing more minority parties to participate in a legislature, this makes the legislature as a whole more inclusive and balanced. If a legislature is more inclusive and balanced, it is believed that this will allow the policy that comes from the legislature to become more stabilized. “The Western European experience suggests that parliamentary proportional representation systems score better with regard to governmental longevity, voter participation, and economic performance” (ACE Project Staff, 2006). Single-transferable vote also allows for voting between parties and candidates within parties. This …show more content…
Personally, if it were up to me as a choice between majority rule or proportional representation, I would select the proportional representation. Unfortunately, the system that we have established in the United States on the local and state level for the most part is majority rule. I feel that a proportional representation electoral system would make the local and state legislatures more effective and a better representation of the electorate. I also feel that our current system is not very welcoming to smaller minority parties because the larger parties feel that the minority parties are not viable and thus just takes votes away from the larger parties. Unfortunately, to implement a proportional representative electoral system in the United States would take a constitutional amendment to achieve on a federal level. However, a proportional representative electoral system seems more practical on a local and state level because in some states it would only take the repealing of some laws to materialize a proportional representative electoral