Dan works for the Midwest Democracy Center, runs this blog, and has a page of good info. He could probably use a bit of design though.
In comments, Dan points out the advantages of cumulative voting or of Irish style instant run-off voting. While I generally agree that such changes are better than a simple first-past the post system in which the plurality wins one seat, I think there are some serious issues to consider that involve both the form of government and the manner in which the electoral system directs institutional preferences.
Cumulative voting is generally a positive thing, though it tends to ignore third party candidates still, but does allow minority voters the ability to elect candidates to gain some representation. The problem being that in strongly partisan areas, all three seats could be picked up with an independent running for the third seat. That is a minor issue in one sense because the minority with even 1/3 of the population would pick up one of three seats in a three seat district as Illinois had. At the time, only a couple independents ran as pseudo-Democrats in Chicago African-American Districts. Depending on the number of members to a district, this may not decentralize the system.
One challenge to any system that would decentralize parties is that it makes a working majority very difficult to cobble together. This is often cited in discussing the problems of stability in Latin American governments. They often utilize a proportional representation system in conjunction with a Presidential system meaning the executive is elected in some variation of first past the post and thus is represents a different group than the legislative body. This can create paralysis.
My argument then would be to utilize a parliamentary system of government where the executive is chosen from the legislature to ensure that the executive has a working coalition under which to cobble a majority together. I believe pushing instant runoff voting in a PR system would be a significant problem under the current organization of every state, even the unicameral in Nebraska. If one wants to spur more parties the manner in which to do it is a limited PR system that I would prefer to look like Germany’s, and an executive that is a part of the legislative branch.
At all costs, a fragmented system such as Israel should be avoided. In fact, I think Israel provides an interesting case study. Israel decentralized the party system when it made the Prime Minister separately elected from the legislature. Instead of pushing towards the median voter, large blocks had to look to relatively fringe parties to make a majority and were beholden to their wishes. To make matters worse, Israel has one legislative district meaning that a party gets representation with about 1% of the vote.
Maintaining a center orientation has several advantages. First it keeps from broad swings in policy in short spans of time. Second, it focuses the debate at the center marginalizing extremists such as communists or fascists. Third, if one believes that the median voter occurs around the top of a Bell Curve, it centers government towards the average point in the electorate.
Too much center focus deprives significant, but minority views from representation–that is what we have now. Too little gives extremists too much influence.
I’ll be adding Dan to the blog roll soon along with
The Return of Ungodly Politics
The DNC’s Kicking Ass
The Windy Pundit
and Greasy Skillet
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