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this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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They could try the system that the allies installed in postwar Germany. It is based on the problems of FPTP voting that they already knew back then, with an attempt to fix it, and is still in use today.
You still vote for your regions representative, but also, with a second vote, for a party. The Bundestag (the German parliament) is then "built" according to the representation in the second vote, the seats are filled with directly elected representatives first, and the rest is filled from a list provided by the parties. If a party has more directly elected representatives than their "share", they still get a seat, but the other parties get additional seats to get back to the proper relative representation.
The only problem is that this leads to an overly large Parliament, and, as to be expected, they fight tooth and nail against any means of reducing their numbers.
What does "overly large" mean? What problems does it cause?
The nominal size of the Bundestag is just below 600 seats. Extraneous seats from directly elected representatives and the necessary amount of extra seats for other parties currently add another 138 seats for a total of 736 MdBs.Which is quite large for 83 million citizens. Imagine having a 2500 seat Congress.
Relative representation continues in the Bundesrat, the Senate equivalent, too. The 16 States have seats relative according to the number of citizens. Small States have less, larger have more representatives. It is not overly proportional, though. Northrhine-Westphalia has six seats, despite having way more citizens than a number of other States together, but it is still way better than having the same number like e.g California and any flyover state.