Proportional representation (PR) in the United States refers to the multi-winner proportional electoral systems currently used in several cities and the Democratic and Republican presidential primary processes.
Cities began adopting PR in the 1910s during the Progressive Era. Historically, PR elected Black candidates in an era defined by Jim Crow laws. PR was gradually repealed in the mid 20th century largely due to backlash to racial and minority political party representation.
Since the 2010s, several electoral reform groups have advocated for the use of proportional representation to elect Congressmembers, instead of the current winner-take-all plurality system. PR advocates often see proportional electoral reform as a way to achieve more representation for women and African Americans in Congress, a way to depolarize the American political system, and a way to increase political participation and turnout. Opponents often see systems that use RCV (STV included) as unfair and confusing. The debate over whether to introduce PR, what form to introduce, and in which races is ongoing.
Proportional representation is achieved by any electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. There are multiple systems for this. The main ones include:
The presidential primary nomination process is most similar to party-list, and all cities that have enacted PR have used single transferable vote. MMP has not been used in the United States, but it is occasionally suggested by PR activists.
United States House of Representatives seats are elected by plurality vote (the candidate receiving the most votes wins). House seats in Maine and Alaska use ranked-choice voting (RCV) instead of plurality voting. Since the late 1960s, all House congressional districts have been single-member districts. The current first-past-the-post (FPTP) system does not require a proportional number of seats in relation to votes, and seat allocation may vary widely from votes cast.
Since 1913, after the ratification of the 17th Amendment, US senators have been elected by plurality vote in at-large, statewide elections. Some states use runoffs or RCV instead to elect senators by a majority instead of a plurality. According to a 1992 DOJ memorandum opinion, Senate races must be at-large and may not be broken into two single-member district races.
The president of the United States cannot be elected directly via proportional representation, since the seat is inherently single-winner. In parliamentary systems, the legislature, which may be proportionally elected, chooses the prime minister. The United States is a presidential system with a separation of the legislature and executive. Many Latin American countries elect their legislatures through party-list proportional representation and hold a direct popular vote for president, such as Peru, Chile, and Costa Rica.
Multiple states ban ranked-choice voting for local elections, which prevents the use of single transferable vote (STV), but not necessarily party-list or MMP systems. Municipalities' ability to alter electoral systems depends on home rule laws. In Minnesota, cities are either statutory or charter cities, and only charter cities are currently able to implement any ranked-choice voting systems.
When the United States Constitution was written, modern PR had not been invented (STV was invented in 1819 and first used in 1856). According to Robert Dahl in How Democratic Is the American Constitution?, winner-take-all was the "only system [<nowiki/>the founders] knew."
The earliest known essay for proportional representation in the United States was written in 1844 by printmaker Thomas Gilpin and dedicated to the American Philosophical Society. The article argued for "minority representation" in Philadelphia elections in a manner that resembles contemporary party-list systems. Gilpin suggested a Native American party could form under PR as a part of a larger coalition.
In 1867, Simon Sterne presented a proportional representation system to elect members of the New York state legislature during the state's constitutional convention on behalf of the Personal Representation Society of New York. His proposed system would have used a unique "proxy" system with flexible number of legislators and disproportionate voting power among representatives. His proposals were not adopted.
The Progressive movement of the early 20th century advocated for a variety of electoral reforms, including proportional representation.
Populist former-Senator William A. Peffer described proportional representation as a "tenet of the People's party creed" in the Advocate in 1897. In the 1898 Populist convention in Topeka, the adopted platform stated, "We demand that the initiative and referendum be embodied in our state constitution and favor proportional representation."
Famous reformers such as John R. Commons advocated for proportional representation to undermine gerrymandering and to elect Black politicians.
In 1913, an initiative to elect representatives via open party-list proportional representation in Los Angeles failed, receiving 48.2% of the vote. The campaign was marked with infighting between socialists who wanted to expand their representation and progressive Republicans who wanted to undermine party influence. A chunk of the progressives were also hesitant to ally with anti-capitalists after a bitter election two years prior.
The Proportional Representation League advocated for the use of single transferable vote, a ranked-choice, proportional vote system, in cities in the 1890s and the early 20th century. The league preferred at-large proportional representation as opposed to district models. In 1932, the Proportional Representation League merged into the National Municipal League, now known as the National Civic League. The National Municipal League endorsed a move toward the city manager plan and STV in 1914. In Ashtabula, the transition to a city manager plan and PR were seen to go together, as there was concern that a plurality voting system would result in only one party appointing the city manager.
According to Jack Santucci, a Georgetown University professor, when city charter reform occurred, most cities chose plurality at-large (block voting), but cities that chose STV instead had intraparty factions (who wanted to weaken party nominations) that allied with minority parties to pass PR.
Between 1915 and 1962, 22 cities used STV, including Cincinnati, Sacramento, and most notably New York City. The first city to use PR the US was Ashtabula, Ohio in 1915 via referendum.
Progressives in LA were set to vote for their preferred system, STV, in 1922, but the Supreme Court of California struck down Sacramento's STV system days before the election.
Kalamazoo, Michigan used PR for two elections before the Michigan Supreme Court overturned the system.
In Cincinnati, the City Charter Committee was formed to pass a citywide ballot initiative to institute PR without Republican machine support. Cincinnati's 1925 City Council election had a threshold of 10% of the vote (including after transfers) for a candidate to be elected to one of the nine seats. This required a candidate to receive 11,974 votes. Candidates who were endorsed by the two main factions (Republicans and the Charter) won their races in 1927. The Republicans performed best in the 1929 election after endorsing nine candidates for the city council.
In January 1929, Representative Victor L. Berger introduced a bill to elect the US House of Representatives by proportional representation. The bill did not pass, and Berger died in August the same year in a trolley accident.
In the wake of the Walker scandal, Fiorello La Guardia advocated for a successful referendum to replace gerrymandered districts with STV. New York City's first election using PR was in 1937. The city used a quota system, wherein each borough was entitled to one councilmember for every 75,000 votes cast (plus one more for a remainder of 50,000 or more). Ballot guides were widely distributed during the election, and the system was credited for making it easier to prevent vote tampering and a having a higher percentage of votes going to elect a candidate than the previous single-member district system.
Proportional representation fell out of favor and began to be repealed after racial and political minorities began to win seats. Initially, most repeals came from court challenges or state repeals without input from local voters. Fear of Black mayors and councilmembers, as well as the Second Red Scare, led to successful referenda against PR.
In his book More Parties or No Parties, Jack Santucci argues STV struggled with vote leakage (voters ranking very different parties close to each other) and was more susceptible to repeal than party-list systems. Reformers in the 1910s had strong anti-party sentiment that conflicted with party-list systems, and the media branded party-list as "socialist," particularly during the failed 1913 Los Angeles charter campaign.
Cambridge has consistently used proportional representation since 1941âÂÂthe only city from the era to do so.
Article Two of the Constitution states "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors...", which has generally been taken to mean that changes to the way states allocate electoral votes (EVs) would have to be passed by states (via legislatures or initiatives) or by a constitutional amendment. According to McPherson v. Blacker, states have plenary power in selecting the method of appointing electors.
The Lodge-Gosset amendment was a proposed constitutional amendment that passed the Senate in 1950 that would have retained the Electoral College but require each state to allocate its electoral votes proportionally. To be elected, a presidential candidate would need to win at least 40% of the total EVs. Louis Lautier argued via the NPAA that the amendment would hurt African Americans' swaying power as an interest group in swing states, primarily due to disenfranchisement in the South (pre-Voting-Rights-Act) preventing a counterbalance in the vote for president.
In early 1956, then-Senator Hubert Humphrey proposed an amendment to the Constitution in which 2 EVs would be given for the winner of a state's popular vote (96 total, before the addition of Alaska and Hawaii) and the rest (435) would be allocated proportionally according to the percentages of the nationwide vote. The proposal passed the House but not the Senate.
In 2004, voters rejected an initiated amendment to the Colorado state constitution that would have allocated its EVs proportionally with the state's popular vote and retroactively applied the system to the 2004 election occurring the same day. Major politicians from both parties (Republican Gov. Bill Owens and the two candidates in the Senate race) opposed the initiative, and opponents argued it would eliminate Colorado's swing state character. One study found that had Colorado allocated its electoral votes proportionally in the previous election, the presidency could have gone to Gore (270-268) if Barbara Lett-Simmons chose not to be a faithless elector.
Currently, multi-member elections for Congress are banned under the Uniform Congressional District Act. The act was intended to ban general tickets (a type of block voting currently used in the Electoral College) for congressional races, which had been controversial since the 1840s, but it also banned proportional systems.
Following the controversial 1968 election, the DNC created the McGovernâÂÂFraser Commission to democratize the presidential nomination process. The commission supported using proportional representation for delegate selection and agreed with the DNC's decision to ban winner-take-all primaries. Proportional representation is currently used to elect pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Candidates must receive at least 15% of the vote to receive delegates. Single transferable vote (proportional ranked-choice voting) was used in four states in the large 2020 Democratic primary, including in Kansas, which saw an increase in turnout.
Currently, the Republican National Committee leaves delegate selection processes to the states, resulting in a variety of systems for the Republican Party presidential nomination process. Some states use proportional representation, a plurality use proportional representation with a winner-take-all trigger after a threshold is reached, and some states use a true winner-take-all system. In the 2024 Republican presidential primary elections, Nikki Haley received 19.7% of the vote and 97 delegates (4% of the total delegates).
Multiple cities use proportional representation to elect their city councils, including Portland, Minneapolis, Charlottesville, and Cambridge. Portland's form of STV elects candidates who reach a victory threshold, but it does not ensure party proportional representation due to the races being formally nonpartisan. Portland first used STV in its 2024 city council election.
Newburgh, New York adopted proportional ranked-choice voting (STV) to resolve a New York Voting Rights Act violation in February 2026. Newburgh had previously elected all five members of its town board members at-large via block voting. The town is currently the first in New York (since the repeals) to use STV. The new system only elects two representatives at a time, resulting in a higher threshold than Portland's races. The transition is expected to elect Black and brown representatives.
According to a September 2024 poll commissioned by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of 3200 eligible voters, 63% of Americans supported a reform to increase the number of political parties, including a majority of Democrats, independents, and Republicans. A Centiment study funded by FairVote found 66% of Democratic Illinois voters supported using proportional ranked-choice voting in the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries.
Reform groups such as FairVote, Protect Democracy, and Fix Our House advocate for proportional representation for federal races. More Equitable Democracy advocates for electoral reform as a way of achieving racial equity.
The ProRep Coalition advocates for use of proportional representation in the California state legislature via ballot initiative, citing increasing poverty, perceived lack of representation for left-of-center ideas in the Democratic Party, and lack of Republican influence on state legislation. The coalition consists of third parties such as the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Forward California, and the American Solidarity Party, as well as advocacy groups such as Represent Women, Californians for Electoral Reform, and Cal RCV.
In October 1995, during the 104th Congress, Representative Cynthia McKinney introduced the Voters' Choice Act, which would have overturned the ban on multi-member districts for Congressional races and allowed for the use of cumulative and limited voting (semi-proportional systems) or single transferable vote (then described as preferential multi-member). Unlike later proposed legislation, adoption of STV would be left to the states.
Every Congressional session since the 115th United States Congress, Congressman Don Beyer has introduced the Fair Representation Act, which would split states into multi-member districts that would elect 3-5 representatives using STV, similar to the Dáil ÃÂireann (lower house in Ireland).
Representative Sean Casten's Equal Voices Act would expand the size of the House of Representatives and allow for the optional use of multi-member districts.
Representatives Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Jared Golden supported the creation of an Electoral Reform Select Committee in the 119th Congress that would examine the current electoral system for Congressmembers and analyze alternatives, such as PR and expanding the House.
In January 2026, House Republicans introduced the Make Elections Great Again Act, which would prohibit ranked-choice voting for federal elections (prohibiting STV) and prohibit any federal system that "permits a voter to vote for more than one candidate for the same office." No modern sitting federal Republican politician has endorsed federal legislation to enact proportional representation.
New York University School of Law professor Richard Pildes argued that political tensions are not inherent to first-past-the-post (FPTP) systems, and he said that the tensions surrounding Brexit were an aberrance in the political climate of the United Kingdom. He also questioned how many parties would form without reform to the Senate. Pildes suggested state legislature multi-member district (MMD) reform efforts to be a better starting place than federal races and recommended nonpartisan reforms to the primary process instead.
According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, some lawmakers elected through winner-take-all elections were hesitant to change the system under which they had been elected, and one said that implementation of PR might require a delay period to pass.
PR prevented vote splitting and undermined the effects of political machines in cities that used it in the 1920s.
In New York City, under STV, 80% of legislation was passed unanimously. In the 1939 election, Genevieve Earle formed a multiracial women's committee to attempt to elect a Black candidate that she had beaten the previous election. Commentators said this showed no resentment between the two.
In the NYC 1939 city council election, which used PR, voter turnout was 90%.
Turnover of representatives between two PR elections in New York City (1937 and 1939) was low, and only four out of 21 councilmembers following the 1939 election were newcomers.
According to Hoag, PR undermined the Ku Klux Klan's ability to enter and control government in Ashtabula and Cleveland in the 1920s, since they did not have majority support. In Cincinnati, Black residents consistently elected 2 (out of 9) Black councilmembers under PR, a disproportionate result for the city's demographics. After the repeal in 1957, the city did not have two Black councilmembers concurrently until 1992. The first Black candidate to win an office in Toledo, Ohio was elected via single transferable vote in 1945.
As part of a 2017 Voting Rights Act (VRA) lawsuit, Eastpointe, Michigan was told by the DOJ it needed to change its electoral system. Pastor Albert Rush of Immanuel United Methodist Church expressed concerns over the original proposal to retain FPTP but remain in compliance with the VRA by drawing single-member districts. The original plan was to create a "Black ward" similar to minority-majority districts used for Congressional races. He characterized racial wards as "a step backward." To settle the lawsuit, Eastpointe changed its electoral system from block voting to single transferable vote with a 33.3% threshold. According to More Equitable Democracy, VRA lawsuits can be lengthy and expensive.
Portland, which had been typically run by white men under FPTP, elected a majority POC city council in 2024 under STV.
In Portland's 2024 election, women won 50% of the seats. Previously, only 10 women had ever been elected to the city council.
In Ohio, of the five cities that adopted PR, only one had a minor party enter city council (one seat in Ashtabula). Cities in Ohio had a de facto two-party system (as opposed to one-party rule that had preceded the change) and not a multi-party system. In New York City, multiple parties arose due to large, diverse interests competing for seats.
PR may also expand national focus from swing races to unrepresented groups, such as Republicans in Democratic congressional districts.
PR elections could introduce three or more political parties to Congress, requiring collaborative coalitions to elect a Speaker of the House.
Proponents of federal proportional representation argue it could give more electoral sway to minority groups who do not currently live in majority-minority districts. The threshold to be elected to Congress would be lower under a proportional voting system. In response to Miller v. Johnson (1995), Representative Cynthia McKinney saw PR as a solution to underrepresentation of African Americans in Congress.