“... the nasty fact is that our winner-take-all election system, adopted from 18th century England, has the potential to leave up to 49.9% of the voters in any district feeling unrepresented -- whatever their race or ethnicity.”    USA Today editorial, 6/30/95

"The system of proportional representation ensures that virtually every constituency in the country will have a hearing in the national and provincial legislatures."                     Bishop Desmond Tutu, The Rainbow People of God, 1994

"The case for [P.R.] is fundamentally the same as that for representative democracy.  Only if an assembly represents the full diversity of opinion within a nation can its decisions be regarded as the decisions of the nation itself."      Encyclopaedia Britannica

“Geography has, however, become less relevant to political identity, despite the role of federal political structures in sustaining differences based on it. It was largely supplanted early in the century by the strong party identification that became characteristic of Australian politics.”                          Marian Sawer,  Dilemmas of Representation, Australian National University

"Because of our peculiar electoral law, the American government is divided between two parties.  The American people are not."   Michael Lind,  Atlantic Monthly, August, 1992

In a nutshell

In both the 1998 and 2001 Australian federal elections for the more influential House of Representatives, the majority of voters ended up with a representative who was not their first choice on the ballot paper. In a country that prides itself on being a democracy, the average voter was not represented by the candidate he or she specifically wanted. Countries with similar Single Member Voting (S.M.V.) systems such as the United States, Canada, India and Great Britain experience situations of political representation that are not that different. Before electoral reform, New Zealand elected governments with a First-Past-the-Post (FPP) system whereby the party winning the most votes, even if fewer than a majority, usually won government. Between 1945 and 1993 there was only one election where the winning party actually won a majority of votes. If that were not bad enough, in both the 1978 and 1981 elections the Labour Party won more votes than the alternative, the National Party, but because of the gerrymander effect inherent in SMV voting, still lost.

Voting turnout is significantly higher in democracies which practice proportional representation, for the very simple reason that citizens have a greater motivation to be involved in the decision making process when their choice can be from more than just two viable alternatives. The dichotomy of what is often described as the “dweedle dee, dweedle dum” option of either the government or the official opposition, leads many to believe that voting will  unfortunately solve little.
In the twenty first century most democracies now practice proportional representation, leaving ironically the so called bastions or citadels of democracy, Britain and the United States, as well as others, stuck with anachronistic systems unsuitable for the modern multicultural world, where only two viewpoints can allegedly represent everyone.
Proportional representation is the ideal system for all legislative houses, not only from the practical considerations of being able to eradicate the problems of gerrymandering and malapportionment, as well as minimising the practice known as pork barrelling, but also from abiding to the basic tenet of liberal democracy: majorities may rule, but all of the people should be represented so as to be able to voice their concerns.

What Proportional Representation is

Proportional representation is a voting system whereby successful parties gain seats in a country’s legislature (Congress, Parliament, Bundestag, Knesset, Diet, Chamber of Deputies, etcetera) in direct proportion to the number of votes they accrue at an election. -- One might ask how it could be any other way.
Centuries ago at the time the concept of the people themselves electing their leaders was barely developing, the technology of communications was at a nascent stage which tended to make elections local in character. Apart from the impracticality of voting for someone residing at the other end of the country, it was assumed that people would only vote for someone they knew or could address, in their own locality. Thus the country was divided up into a large number of electorates of approximate equal population, each electing one representative to send to the nations legislature. This single-member-voting system that developed is the antithesis of proportional representation (see below).
From the very beginning the problem rose that as each candidate does not win by the same margin, and as minority viewpoint parties might contest every electorate and still win no seats, the resulting composition of winning parties is often far from accurately representing the viewpoints of the voting public.

Why must the criterion of representation be fixed?

Throughout the world there are two basic types of electoral systems practiced by democracies:  geographical criterion representation and indeterminate criterion representation.

Geographical Criterion Representation (a.k.a. single member, pluralist, first-past-the-post, or majoritarian voting)

1. For an election, the country is divided up into a large number of  electorates /districts /constituencies /divisions. Political parties and independents will contest each one of these in a discrete mini-election to determine which one person is to represent the area in the national legislature.  Every candidate has to attempt to convince the majority of the constituents of their area that he would be their best representative. He has to be ‘all things to all men’.
2. You, as a resident of that electorate are defined by where you live. Your member (congressperson / member of parliament) represents not so much a political party but all residents of that electorate.
3. The member is identified in the legislature as, for example, the “member for Melbourne Ports”, “representative of the 24^th district”.
4. The member is answerable to the residents for all their concerns about government (at least to the degree that he can represent all the divergent interests at the same time).

Indeterminate Criterion Representation (a.k.a. proportional representation)

1. There are no mini-elections but just one whole election where all the votes are brought together to be tallied. A winning candidate may have accrued his votes from any or all parts of the country. Parties and independent candidates design their agenda / political platform according to what they see as the important issues of the day, and then offer themselves to various segments of the voting public. They are successful to the degree that they are viewed by sections of the public as responsible and accommodating to the voter’s specific concerns.
2. You, as a voter, are defined by what you want to be defined by. Your representative in government represents your chosen interests.
3. The member is identified and easily labelled as, for example, the Greens parliamentarian, the Republican, the Democrat, the Christian Socialist, the Libertarian, the Free Trader, the parliamentarian for the wheat growing districts, the parliamentarian for the inner cities, the parliamentarian for the diary districts, the parliamentarian representing pensioners, the gay rights parliamentarian, the parliamentarian representing the indigenous.
4. The member is answerable to those who voted for him in that he is answerable to his or his party’s declared platform.

The perennial problems associated with geographical criterion representation is that, with regards to political decision making, it is taken for granted that voters should be defined by where they live. There is the assumption that a person only looks at the important issues of the day from the perspective of someone who lives in his geographical area. We are asked to believe that a person walking into a polling booth will ask : “Which of the candidates on offer is going to be the greater benefit to the residents of my area of town?”  Is it not possible that he might be more concerned about those of his own economic status, religion, profession or beliefs and values?
This site suggests that voters should have the autonomous right to define themselves by any criterion they choose, including: position on social / human rights issues, economic status, occupation type, age, gender, religion, as well as geographical region.
To divide the state up into electoral zones for the sake of the ‘local concerns of the voters’ would appear to be merely an excuse to raise the necessary quota for wining a seat so as to deny unwelcome minorities the opportunity for political representation.