Why adopting proportional voting may bring back the big-tent political party

In this week’s midterm elections, Maine will break new ground by using ranked-choice voting to select who to send to Washington DC. But another kind of ranked-choice voting has also gotten lots of attention — the single transferable vote, a type of proportional representation. Jack Santucci gives an overview of how this form of ranked-choice voting works, its history, and what its wider adoption might mean for US politics. He argues that the system helps to build parties – not kill them – and ensures that those in the majority remain responsive to the needs of voters who feel unrepresented.