U.S. electoral reform -- Openings for Multi-Member Districts and STV or list PR

Tom Monto
23 hours ago
29 min read

Regarding what form of PR is best for the U.S. (STV, list PR, MMP)

the use of party voting in list PR, and MMP as well, may be unpopular among voters who are used to voting directly for a candidate.

Overall top-up levelling seats are likely not available in the U.S.

(just like in Canada where, constitutionally, votes may not cross provincial boundaries, as each province must have its own discrete representation - as in so many seats for this province, so many for that.

Multi-member districts with fair voting may achieve as fair rep. as list PR or MMP, excepting the most dispersed parties with shallow support. fair voting meaning STV or list PR.

Many list PR and regionalized MMP (Scottish-style) use as low District Magnitude as is available under STV.

West Australia recently conducted STV election electing 37 members.

Few list PR systems use DM greater than that, or at least, only some use DM larger than that.

That wide DM does mean lowering the concept of local representation so such would either cause or reflect more party-based thought than local sentiment.

Fine if party means true sentiment of voters (while of course local rep. has been blinded by historically being based on myth that a single-member can represent all those who happen to be penned in a micro-district that covers just part of a city.)

But if party means votes are funnelled into approving the agenda of party insiders, then not so good.

A multi-member district in many cases will cover just what a single member represents in other contexts.

Everyone living in a city-wide district is represented by a mayor. therefore such a MMD can hardly be said to be too large to be one district, when one member represents that many. If one can cover that size, then surely five or 7 or 12 or whatever number of multiple members should be able to.

And that mayor, like a local sports team, is (or should be) seen as being local enough.

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regarding charge that rural voters are disenfranchising urban voters

yes minority rule is wrong whether urban or rural.

if larger states can be broken up, then for sure i would agree with using city boundaries for the new city-states literally speaking.

But rep. by pop. (through equal rep. for equal state population, through partitioning of large states)) is no guarantee of majority rule. (it may create situation where members elected in a majority of states or in states with a majority of voters are a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives but that does not mean that they were actually elected with majority of votes cast in the country.

What is sometimes said about need for MMDs and STV to elect the House applies to Senate.

it seems logical that if number of reps per state cannot vary, then states should be made same size.

but fair voting is needed -- each voter having one vote and it is transferable, and districts are state-wide, or at least district magnitude of five or some other odd number (seven? nine?)

even three is at least an improvement over 1.

because even if all states had exactly the same population, which means Delaware size, and that means California would be divided into 60 states

and that would mean the Senate would have 480 Senators,

and even then you might still have minority rule unless you have fair election system.

even if each state had exactly same number of voters, voter turnout varies from place to place, and the percentage needed to be elected under FPTP varies from perhaps 24 percent to 80 percent and that variation is not evenly balanced from party to party.

so minority rule is still possible.

what one should think about is a system where 1/100th of votes cast elects one Senator of he hundfred in the Senate. (so 51/100ths elects 51 out of 100 Senators.)

but you also must have districting due to Constitution, as each state is separate.

the more districts, the more electorate is splintered. and democratic chaos results.

choice seems to be to lump small states together or splinter the large ones into smaller units.

or to do either of those or neither but bring in fair voting.

if you are talking about raising the number of senators overall, then simply do that but give each voter one vote and make that transferable.

if states remain as is, majority rule would still be long shot

but let's say every 2M deserve their own state.

California would be maybe 16 states

TX 16

FLA 12

New York 10

Pennsylvania Illinois 7 each

Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina 6 each

Michigan New Jersey, Virginia 5 each

Wash Ariz Tenn Mass. Indiana Maryland Missouri 4 each

something like that

population for each state would then range:

from Alaska at smallest (740,000 pop.) to 2M for a new state to 6M for Wisconsin, which let's suppose does not want to partition.

a range of factor of ten

versus today's range of a factor of 53 from California to Alaska.

U.S. grows to something like 164 states

(133 new states plus 31 old states)

with two per state, Senate composed of 328 Senators

with three per state (minimum for respectable PR), Senate would be composed of 492.

let's say each state elects three senators, and does that in one contest using STV, you would still have equal rep. from state to state, and in each state 75 percent of votes would actually elect someone, and a majority in each state would elect two or more of the three.

one-seat rep. would be quarter of votes in a state

(Wisconsin would be a large state if the larger ones are partitioned!)

in a large state such as Wisconsin rep. would be won by about 1.5M with 185,000 votes enough for a seat in Alaska.

so still theoretically a quarter of votes could capture a majority in the Senate.

(even if each state was exactly equal in size, with electorate splintered into no less than 50 districts (states), majority rule is not guaranteed.)

further clarification of the idea:

in U.S. some states are large and have small population alaska

some are small and have small population Delaware

some are large and have large populations New York, California

in each state including Alaska, more than half of the population, usually about 2-3rds or more, live in cities.

so this is not fight between rural votes and urban voters if we talking about state versus state, if each voter has same chance to be elected.

but under FPTP, Republican are elected in low-population states in states labeled rural. rural voters in those places elect the members, urban voters are under-represented in those states.

and Democrats are elected in high-population states labeled as urban states. urban voters in those places elect the members. rural (Republican) voters are under-represented in those states.

my belief is:

rural over-representation or minority rule is just as bad as urban over-representation or minority rule.

a government elected by a minority of voters in a group of "rural states" is bad

but also some may say that a government elected by voters in just cities or in just a corner of he country even if it is composed of a majority of U.S. voters may be undemocratic. fore instance many would ask why should voters in 95 percent of the country by land area be disempowered?

and to address that kind of unfairness, U.S. constitution gives each state the same representation in the Senate.

with FPTP used, this is obviously not working - it does not ensure majority rule, it also does not ensure majority representation in each state (or district).

we could partition the states so there is less variation in population sizes, and have both senators in each state elected at same time, and we could adopt fair voting, a high proportion of voters in each state would be represented, and many states would likely elect a balanced crop of members.

still with 50 different districts (states ) (and more after partition) and votes held separate in each, there is no guarantee of majority rule. that a majority of voters will elect the members who compose the largest caucus in the chamber. but it would be better

so even if we partition the largest states, we need PR in each state

and that PR would be even better if each state has three or more members

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regarding what form of PR is best for the U.S. (STV, list PR, MMP)

the use of party voting in list PR, and MMP as well, may be unpopular among voters who are used to voting directly for a candidate.

Overall top-up levelling seats are likely not available in Canada where, constitutionally, votes may not cross provincial boundaries, as each province must have its own discrete representation - as in so many seats for this province, so many for that.

Multi-member districts with fair voting may achieve as fair rep. as list PR or MMP, excepting the most dispersed parties with shallow support. fair voting meaning STV or list PR.

Many list PR and regionalized MMP (Scottish-style) use as low District Magnitude as is available under STV. West Australia recently conducted STV election electing 37 members. Few list PR systems use DM greater than that, or at least only some use DM larger than that.

That wide DM does mean lowering the concept of local representation so such would either cause or reflect more party-based thought than local sentiment.

But if party means votes are funnelled into approving the agenda of party insiders, then not so good.

A multi-member district in many cases will cover just what a single member represents in other contexts.

And that mayor, like a local sports team, is (or should be) seen as being local enough.

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xxx

I disagree with you about the impossibility of having PR at federal level in the U.S.

sure 14 Representatives are elected in states with one or two members each. so scant possibility of PR there

but in 36 states, about 420 Representatives are elected where DM is three or more, sometimes considerably more than 3.

so that gives chance overall for significant PR improvement, even if some states would be left out of PR. Even so, they would be no worse than they are now.

and voters of small third parties there could look to members elected elsewhere to carry the ball.

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states can make their own rules to elect federal members so that is possibility get it in state elections and then get PR in those states at federal level..

maybe even start at city level --

some cities in California use STV, so perhaps that can drift over to state level.

plus STV is used in Cambridge Mass. city elections.

here's an interesting paper:

https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/the-future-is-proportional/

compares STV and FPTP, as alternatives to the old-outdated methods still used in some places -- plurality block voting and the designated seat system (AKA post-seat system).

(interesting to see FPTP as an alternative to bad systems but it is true many jurisdictions still use block voting, which is less good even than FPP, and so much more frustrating as its multi-member districts can so easily do good if voter only had one vote. (even if not transferable --

SNTV works good in Vanuatu elections, if you care to check it out.

I have a blog on it by the way -- Montopedia https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/what-is-sntv-and-is-it-proportional

haven't quite got into the Benade paper yet but looks like it talks actually about STV, not the IRV that so often is discussed when "ranked voting" is discussed.

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with STV , any candidate that picks up Droop worth of votes in the state will be elected.

(quick definition: Droop is even lower than votes divided by seats.)

so say any candidate with a third of votes in a state will take a seat in a state with two seats.

that means likely that two main parties will each be represented, and 90+ percent of vote will be used to secure representation.

this produces multi-party representation (defined strictly - two or more), balance and high percentage of effective votes. those actually are goals of PR.

we must ask ourselves what is goal of elections?

you might seem to say, as many do say, it is to elect an all-powerful government, party with a majority of seats

but it can be said that the goal of elections is to fill seats (so quick and dirty FPTP is good enough ) or to allow the voter a chance to express their sentiments, whether it results in election or not.

PR says voter should have liberty to express their sentiment and also (not coincidentally) that they would have best chance possible to elect someone as well.

but yes some states with just two seats will give both to one party - Hawaii, Idaho - but that is just because two-thirds of voters support one party. it would be unjust not to.

New Hamp. would give one to each, it seems.

in California with 52 Representatives, a candidate with 2 percent of votes would be elected if seats filled in state-wide contest. no third party took that amount of CA votes in 2024 but with lower threshold for representation and fairer system, that might change under PR.

in CA functionally perhaps 17-17-18 seat size is recommended and even then complaints about lack of local representation. (but any 2 percent will get seat whether placed due to local allegiance, or to party, or to religion, or to race, or to gender, etc.)

even with three districts, that 2 percent holds true roughly -- only now that 2 percent of state vote would have to be concentrated in just one third of the state. but still that is much different than trying to get plurality in 1/52nd of the state as now.

list PR operates same as STV in at-large context or in multi-seat districts, except it is based on party label.

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two-seat district magnitude is not great but it does offer some advances over present FPTP in two arbitrary or gerrymandered districts.

it may produce mixed, balanced representation that would break down the artificial regionalization and polarization.

with fair voting used (STV or list PR or even SNTV) it gives most voters someone of like mind as a rep., whether that is two thirds of voters for one party that elects two, or one of each major party.

and anyways Greens or Libertarians in states with "flat" representation would be able to look to Greens or Libertarians elected in states with larger district magnitude for a voice, which they do not have now. it is not only the district result we have to look at but also the make-up of the legislature. and PR in large states produces advances for disenfranchised, unrepresented voters in small states

with fair voting, approx. each 347,000 votes (150M/435) would elect someone as long as it was concentrated in one state or district. so based on 2024 results, Libertarian might take two seats, Greens with twice its votes (potentially possible under fair voting) would take one.

hope would be to see PR elect members of several parties (the multi-party culture you mentioned), to break down the polarization and to open up democracy

such as in 1912 when (even under FPTP) Progressives and Socialists received 10 and 8 percent of the vote respectively.

and also if we are talking possibilities, the Senate could be elected in multi-seat contests -- two per states. there is no rule in constitution that they have to be elected separately, just that a third have to be elected each two years. Or change it so there are three per state, with all in a third of the states elected each two years

a party with majority of voters in a state ( if any) get two seats, the largest minority gets one,

or any party with a quarter of votes plus at least 1 vote would get a seat!

150M votes cast in 2024 is about 61 percent turnout based on estimated 245M voters. so that is low for a democracy.

perhaps increase to 500 seats would be acceptable, then Delaware and the Dakotas might have enough population to get two seats.

if turnout increases due to PR, up to say 80 percent, you would have 196M voting and in 500-seat House, 392,000 would be enough to elect a rep. (so both easier and harder than under today's FPTP)

but third parties would get more votes as they would be seen as more likely to get seats so two or three might quickly get seats and no party taking a majority of seats. a multiparty agreement would be needed to pass legislation, breaking down the polarization although there would still be intense battle between Democrats and Republicans. (even in PR NZ, there is still fight between Labour and Nationalists.)

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regarding how to get PR adopted

Nevil Shute in his book In the Wet fictionalizes that if one state got fair elections and improved the quality of its representatives, its people would eventually arise to leadership of national government and then other states would learn to adopt that fairness too.

In Shute's case this is achieved through giving more votes to (what he thought were) wiser voters.

all adults got one vote

and given one more vote if you have post-secondary educ, family, property, business, military service, public office, children, like that.

elected people from that state proved themselves to be wiser reflecting the changed perspective of most votes cast,

and other states soon copied that.

with PR being case of more diverse leadership, as opposed to wiser (as if there is a right and a wrong), the way to prove the effectiveness of PR would have to be different than that.

We i think rightly believe that voters will be happier (better satisfied anyway) and turnout will rise but will the quality of rep rise under PR?

possibly if we consider that under PR polarization will calm, the more-moderate, not the more-extreme, candidates will have advantage, that local political culture or accidents will have less impact on make up of cabinet - now a local district result can bar a significant player from the chamber while under PR, if that party has substantial support in a district, it will elect, and will likely elect the most-high-status candidate in the district - unless he personally has done something bad in eyes of voter.

while under FPTP even if he personally has done something bad in eyes of voter, he might be elected just because there is no one else from that party running in the district. so the case might be not so much that PR elects better as that FPTP can elect the bad.

and that advantage of PR is bound to have an effect sometime...

has this type of thing been used anywhere?

some cities allowed property owners to cast a vote in each ward where they own property, and some allowed them to cast varying number of votes depending value of the property they owned.

a province in Canada gave property owners that right regarding prov. districts. there is an account of one man hurrying around and casting like 24 votes in one day. PEI maybe?

UK used to have university seats where grads would vote to fill the university seat. those people had two votes - one in their local district and one for the Univ seat.

cities sometimes switched to fewer wards or to at-large district so as to reduce the number of votes property owners could cast.

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regarding how STV is complicated while list PR is simple

You say "Voting for that candidate counts as a vote for your party, but also a vote for that candidate, in the determination of which candidates get the seats won by your party. The candidates are seated in the order of their vote-counts. Any unfilled seats are then assigned to the remaining candidates in the list, in their listed-order."

but that actual allocation of seats to individuals is not part of your "simple explanation of St-L."

Droop is not biased in favor of large parties. it is just kinder to them than Hare, which is tougher on them (because Hare allows un-necessary surplus votes to rest with early winners when large parties want their votes shared out best to take more seats).

Droop is lowest figure that allows no more to get quota than the number of seats. anything more than that is un-necessarily large and may (or may not) affect the parties' seat counts.

But sometimes difference between Hare and Droop is negligible.

where DM is large, difference between Hare and Droop is less than one percent of votes.

in DM-10, Droop is 9 percent plus 1, Hare is 10 percent.

so not much impact on large parties' rep.

at 21 DM, as used in NSW Aus. the difference is even smaller-

Hare 5 percent

Droop 4.54 percent,

the difference is hardly going to make much difference when parties are thousands of votes apart.

A bare-bones explanation of STV is multi-member district where each voter has one vote. Votes are placed on candidates. Quota is determined and anyone attaining quota is elected. As well, if necessary, surplus votes of quota-winners are transferred according to next usable marked preference. If necessary, least-popular candidate are eliminated and their votes transferred. Process continues until all seats are filled by quota winners or until field of candidates is thinned to number of remaining open seats.

(or as you said regarding IRV, if necessary, "Repeatedly eliminate the candidate who [has] fewest [votes]."

that part of IRV is identical to STV. -

only other difference between IRV and STV is: STV is multi-winner which means surplus vote of winners need to be transferred, which happens only in relative small number of rounds of counting.

sure there are various ways to conduct transfers of surplus votes. just as there are various ways to construct open-list PR, which you overlook in your "simple explanation".

bearing in mind the DM, STV is just as proportional as list PR, if you use votes as placed at end.

with each winner having identical vote tally, or close to it for those elected in last round, there is no way this could not be true.

of course transfers can affect the parties' tallies of votes. that is part of why they are used. so using first-round votes to assess STV proportionality is not fair.

regarding idea that list PR means no districting while STV does entail that complication:

few PR systems above city level use at-large districting.

most list PR systems use DM of less than 20, which is perfectly workable under STV as well.

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Michael Gallagher Comparing P.R. Electoral Systems. Quotas, Thresholds, Paradoxes Majorities

common DM under PR:

7 is about average for DM used in Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Norway, Spain and Switzerland

14 is about average for DM used in Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Sweden p. 485

[and his figure for Denmark is misleading -- all but 5 use DM of 10 to 20.

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but any use of MMD decreases that shattering of the electorate, and decreases chance of unfair results.

illustration:

FPP 36 districts

PR (list or STV) perhaps 4 districts of nine, hopefully based on pre-existing geographic units --cities, counties, etc..

still some districting but much more fairness and more flexibility.

and when population shifts, simply add or take away one seat,

no re-districting required.

plus or minus ten or 20 percent from district to district much more flexible by thousands of votes when MMDs used, but also any variation is spread over more seats so appears more equal and fair.

say 1M voters 36 seats

FPP: median district size 28,000 so acceptable range is 22,222 to 33,600

MMD DM-9: median 252,000 so acceptable range is 202,000 to 302,000

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miscellaneous wasted votes

you say: "Multiply this “wasted vote” dynamic across the geography of 435 House districts and its quite conceivable that this ostensibly “proportional” voting system would not result in nationwide proportional representation at all."

if you are using super-districts then you do not have 435 house districts.

and an upper limit of 7 seats in a district is not necessary,

back in 1920 the Winnipeg district elected ten members using STV -- without computers!

currently jurisdictions in Australia use district of 21 and 37, using STV.

so each state except the very largest could be state-wide district.

with each quota (1/21 for example) being enough to elect a member, each 1/21th of a district could elect their own member if the voters there vote only for candidates from that place, so local representation is still produced.

any DM that works for STV works for list PR, and most district sizes used in list PR would be work-able under STV as well.

having a quota as threshold means you have structured elections not just some hurly-burly where the one strongest candidate is elected in each arbitrarily-defined district.

multi-member districts means each member represents a group of same-thinking people;

having only one member in a district means the member must present himself or herself as the rep for the whole district when such is obviously impossible.

if a member could represent everyone irrespective of who the member is and who the voter is, then why have elections at all?

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use of MMDs tody

Nine states use multimember districts to fill at least one state legislative chamber, and four — Arizona, New Jersey, South Dakota and Washington — elect all their state lawmakers this way

Arizona, 30 DM-2 districts

New Jersey, 40 DM-2 districts

South Dakota basically 35 DM-2 districts*

Washington 49 DM-2 districts

* South Dakota -- State legislators are elected from 35 legislative districts; each multi-member district elects one senator and two representatives. In 33 districts, representatives are elected at-large from the entire district. District 26 and 28, however, are divided into two house districts, each of which elects one representative. This is intended to ensure that Native Americans can elect representatives of their choice.

New Jersey is one of seven U.S. states (with Arizona, Idaho, Maryland, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington) in which districts for the upper and lower house of the legislature are coterminous. (but elect different number of members in each district)

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New Jersey 12 house of reps.

40 districts

unfortunately inspections shows that those four states use districts of only DM-2 so not large enough to work for House of Reps.

but they could be building blocks for national level districts,

thus, say for New Jersey with 12 House of Reps and 40 districts, each with two state Assemblymen and one Senator

NJ could have 2 House of Rep districts each electing 6,

each HofR district could be split into 4 districts ("State districts"), each electing ten General Assembly and 5 state Senators. (each HofR district would cover 20 of today's districts. Each new "state district" would cover a quarter of a new HofR district, or 5 of the old districts.)

(national-level Senators would be elected state-wide, hopefully staggered terms will be dropped)

with only two (or eight) districts instead of 12 or 40, the opportunity for gerrymandering would be reduced.

every member is elected in an multi-member district.

with fair voting (each voter having one vote and list PR or STV used), affirmative gerrymandering would not be required to ensure minority representation.

Now i see the maps where you designed the MMDs in NJ using three or four MMDs, and using the largest DM possible when five is max DM and four is discouraged.

Perhaps three- or four-district systems could made to work to be used with the state assemblymen and the state Senators as well.

(but 40 is not evenly divisible by 12. 40 is divisible by 2 and 8 so the 2-8 district system works well mathematically

SO...

NJ could have 4 House of Rep districts each electing 3,

each HofR district could be split into 2 districts ("State districts"), each electing ten General Assembly and 5 state Senators. (each HofR district would cover 10 of today's districts. Each new "state district" would cover half of a new HofR district, or 5 of the old districts.)

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need for MMDs and STV to elect the House applies to Senate.

improved rep by pop is no substitute for fair voting and MMDs:

"the most critical follow-on reform would be to replace single-seat House districts with multi-seat districts using proportional ranked-choice voting, while also expanding the House to 1,000 seats"

Abolishing the staggered terms does juice up the DM. If must have a third of seats elected each two years, make it the seats in a third of the states, not a third of the seats in all the states.

California has GDP of $4T. In the world. this is larger than all but Germany, China and the rest of the U.S. In case of civil war, some Trump states would be the poorer ones, despite his anti-poor rich-man statements.

regarding what form of PR is best for the U.S. (STV, list PR, MMP)

you stated the goals of electoral reform, and then addressed each of the three main alternatives to FPTP with those in mind.

I don't see MMP as being possible without considerable un-necessary work. You have to get approval for votes to drift outside a district when used to allocate regional top-up seats, the regions used for top-up cannot be larger than a state, without constitutional change or considerable stretching of rules.

so if anything, you are likely talking about regionalized MMP like Scotland's not NZ's. with regions within each state. and region would have to have about ten or more to have any significant PR value for small parties, with five districts (twice the size presently) and five top-up. the effect of MMP in ten-seat regions may be just as limited as you say PR is. Most of the five top-up seats may be needed to be used only to set the two main parties in the right relationship in seat counts to each other due to the unbalanced proportionality district seat counts won under FPTP, and not be available to help the little parties.

(perhaps you analyzed the idea of regionalized MMP. if so, sorry, I must have missed it.)

while a DM-10 district and list PR or STV promises more effective proportionality, more Rep. for small parties, than that. IMO

you are correct in saying that Denmark is smaller country but that doesn't mean that its electoral districts use the small DM that you describe (7-11).

its elections use only twelve districts and it has 179 members (one member for each 20,000 votes)

(by the way, U.S. would have about 7500 Representatives at that ratio of votes per member)

so DM in each or most Danish districts is respectable despite small country.

there are only 5 districts that use DM-2. none use 1.

the rest range from 10 to 20.

In North Jutland (DM-15), a typical multi-member district (MMD), in 2022 parties won a seat for each 10,000 to 20,000 votes it received. (about .56 percent of overall votes cast)

Denmark uses list PR but it uses a form of MMP, with multi-member districts where list PR is used. This allows the number of top-up seats to be low compared to NZ.

I am a fan of STV. I like its basic structure - that each voter casts just one vote in MMD. I think its flexible vote count/vote transfer system allows voters to vote for whom they truly want knowing there is back-up in the system (redundancy if you will).

list PR does as good a job of making high portion of effective votes and giving small parties representation as STV does at each DM level.

Denmark uses list PR in its few DM-2 districts and in 2022 each district elected members from two different parties. that is in Denmark's 3+-party system.

U.S. needs STV or list PR but doesn't need large DM --

even DM of 5 would allow small third parties to start to elect and have recognizable presence. if in any DM-5 district a small party has 16 percent of the votes (or even fewer under certain circumstances) the party will elect a Rep. That is huge.

In your article, you actually downplay the suppression of wasted votes under the present U.S. system.

you say a party with 60 percent will win all the seats. thus leaving 40 percent wasted

but actually in some districts as much as 50 percent is wasted, or even most of the votes will elect no one.

Ohio 9th, 2024: 48 percent of voters elected the winner, 52 percent of votes elected no one.

I disagree with you about the impossibility of having PR at federal level in the U.S.

sure 14 Representatives are elected in states with one or two members each. so scant possibility of PR there

but in 36 states, about 420 Representatives are elected where DM is three or more, sometimes considerably more than 3.

so that gives chance overall for significant PR improvement, even if some states would be left out of PR. Even so, they would be no worse than they are now.

and voters of small third parties there could look to members elected elsewhere to carry the ball.

====

states can make their own rules to elect federal members so that is possibility get it in state elections and then get PR in those states at federal level..

maybe even start at city level --

some cities in California use STV, so perhaps that can drift over to state level.

plus STV is used in Cambridge Mass. city elections.

here's an interesting paper:

https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/the-future-is-proportional/

compares STV and FPTP, as alternatives to the old-outdated methods still used in some places -- plurality block voting and the designated seat system (AKA post-seat system).

SNTV works good in Vanuatu elections, if you care to check it out.

I have a blog on it by the way --

Montopedia https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/what-is-sntv-and-is-it-proportional