Protect Democracy’s Ben Raderstorf and FairVote’s Mike Parsons have written this piece on the lessons that today’s reformers can learn from the wave of electoral systems reform that swept through American cities between 1915 and 1950, when many cities adopted and repealed PR.

Read the whole thing! But here are some excerpts on the lessons one can learn from :

So four lessons from this historical debate to take forward:

One: Focus on the end goals — pluralism and representation

Every reform is an instrument to an outcome, not an end in itself. Even as we argue and debate and experiment, let’s not miss the forest for the trees. American democracy is under threat because a calcified two-party system supported by winner-take-all elections are advantaging extremists and has put an unpopular autocrat back in the White House.

Two: Stay experimental

Because we don’t know exactly how different reforms will interact with the particular idiosyncrasies of American politics, we should be building a diverse portfolio of reform efforts with a reasonable degree of experimentation among proven systems as an explicit goal. Over-investment in any specific reform strategy, be it party-list or STV or otherwise, risks catastrophe if the bet goes bad. Alternatively, every reform that tries something slightly different gives us more data about how proportional representation works in the real, 21st-century United States.

Three: Find ways to channel — not resist — parties and factions

Political scientists almost unanimously agree that political parties are a necessary feature of a healthy democracy, as much as many Americans dislike them (the parties, we mean, not the political scientists). They’re the basic organizing function that keeps politics from descending into chaos. So one key question for reformers is this: How can we tap into widespread frustration with the parties as they are today to enact reform while proposing ways to help them function better in the future to sustain reform? Party-list advocates can learn from the adoptions of the Progressive Era just as STV advocates can learn from the repeals.

Four: Beware the election reformer’s dilemma

Finally, regardless of what happened back in the early 20th century, it’s worth approaching reform with a degree of humility regarding what will work, what won’t, and why. This is in part due to “the election reformer’s dilemma”:

The people who are most excited about electoral reform at the outset often approach politics from a different perspective from the voters the reform is intended to serve.

Almost by definition, those of us who are excited about electoral reform on its own merits are not anywhere close to the average voter. Election reformers tend to be far more politically engaged than the majority of the electorate. Many have more free time to engage in politics, or even count reform or politics as a full-time job. Some of us may follow the latest research produced by political scientists (or be political scientists ourselves). And some of us may be personally willing — even excited — to vote in multiple elections a year and have fairly detailed preferences and political views, including on individual candidates, ballot issues and so on.