Could Proportional Representation Fix Congress?

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

News, Politics, Daily News

4.4 • 25.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most congressional general elections are not competitive. It's why some people feel like voting won't make a difference, or that their interests are not represented by the people who win. Advocates say proportional representation could fix that — a system that where each congressional district would elect multiple representatives, and House seats would be distributed roughly in proportion to the votes each party gets. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang wrote about the idea recently.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid and I'm here once again to mark the season of giving
0:06.4	By giving you all a chance to hear an episode for our NPR Politics Plus listeners.
0:11.5	If that is you, thank you so much for your support. And if it's not,
0:15.3	please consider signing up. You might wonder what's in it for you. Well, you'll help make our
0:20.0	political reporting possible. You'll hear every episode without sponsor messages
0:24.4	and you could get a chance to be in an episode and play our trivia game and twice a month you'll get
0:29.3	bonus episodes like this one. Learn more at plus dot npr.
0:34.0	with that hope you enjoy this bonus episode
0:36.0	thanks for listening and happy holidays
0:38.0	hey there it's the m Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. Today's
0:46.8	bonus episode starts with a question. Could proportional representation fix
0:52.0	Congress? That question is also the headline of a recent story. proportional representation fix Congress.
0:53.0	That question is also the headline of a recent story by NPR's Hansu Luang.
0:56.8	Hey Hansi?
0:57.6	Hey Ashley.
0:58.4	Hansi covers voting and elections for the NPR politics team.
1:01.8	Also here is NPR Senior Editor and Correspondent
1:04.5	Ron Elving who has looked at this issue as well. Hey Ron. Good to be with you
1:08.2	Ashley. So again the question is could proportional representation fix Congress?
1:14.0	It's kind of a wonky experimental question
1:16.2	that we thought would be interesting to unpack.
1:18.7	Hansi, let's start with you.
	...

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