Isreal's situation is a good argument against PR

I'll probably write up a longer post when I get motivated to do so.

Proportional Representation, where a party earns seats in the legislature in relation to their proportion of the votes, is a pretty common system in parliamentary Democracies that aren't former British Colonies.

Real Basic Example: There is a 10 seat legislature, and the voters vote 40% Democrat 30% Republican, 20% Green and 10% Libertarian. The breakdown of seats would be 4 Democrats, 3 Republicans, 2 Greens and 1 Libertarian.

It has the advantage of ensuring that people don't "waste" their vote by voting for a compromise candidate, and that a wider variety of voices are heard in government. There are a number of different systems that change the specifics, but that's the basic rundown.

I'm a big believer in it, as opposed to our winner-take-all, single member districts. In the above example, the Democrat would win and have the only voice. I think that it's undemocratic and unfair.

However, the recent elections in Israel show the danger in that system. While the inconclusive election results did democratically reflect the growing political disenchantment with politics in Israel, it's created a lot of uncertainty in a county that has a lot of problems facing it.

I think there is a solution, but I'll talk more about that later.