A well written article, Kiera. You are expressing yourself loud and clear. I agree with most of what you write. The good news is that I do see bright spots.

Did you know that there are places in the world where things are not as bad as here? Yes, there are also places where it is worse than here. True.

An essential part that I do not see you write about is the decision-making process. It is not the same everywhere in the world.

In Scandinavian countries they do not have a president, a senate and a house; they have one house only. The Scandinavian voters don’t vote three times so their votes can then start fighting with one another. They vote just once and then they are done.

That means their government is listening better to the voters, and it means their government is taking actions in light of the voters better than our government here.

With three institutions, Presidency, Senate, and House, we can get less done, and that benefits the winners. The less is organized, the better it is for those that benefit from less organization.

That’s the first thing I wanted to mention that should make all of us a little happier. The world is a diverse place and there are different things out there from which we may be able to take something that is good for us.

The other part is winner-take-all. All our governmental levels are ultimately run by winner-take-all. No wonder that the winners are taking so much because we have a system set up for them. The system doesn’t point at anyone in particular, so it is not long-live-the-king, but it is long-live-the-winner, whoever that is. You write about that, too.

In proportional voting, all voters are represented. Each portion of the population with a certain political color gets the same portion in the house (and the senate if there is a senate). Pro-portional.

Here, up to 49.99% of the voters can get nothing. We have one of the lowest voter turn-outs in the democratic world because who comes out again and again so you end up getting nothing?

As you know, we may be able to change that winner-take-all system at the local level. The Founding Fathers are with us.

Help spread the word. Instead of city, state, and federal level all being winner-take-all, we can take one level out and make it a fair system. Perhaps we can even change the state level later on.

Here is the best news: New Zealand used to have a two-party system. They changed it in 1996 to incorporate proportional voting. You know what happened? Already with the first election, they got almost 50% more females in the seats.

Can you believe it? It is because Proportional Voting is smart. Winner-take-all is depressing.

Today, New Zealand has 47.5% of ALL seats occupied by women.

Sad news for USA. We are 76th in the world on the list of female representation. Winner-take-all is not good for female representation. Only because women became more vocal in the last decade do we now have the percentage that New Zealand had before they changed the system. It used to be super-bad here, now it is just bad. Imagine what would happen if we changed the voting system.

There are good reasons to remove the bad voting system with the good voting system. Change will likely be gradual, so no hoorays tomorrow, but in five years? For sure.

We can become a better society because people like you deserve a better society.