Equal-area map of congressional districts without one of the major parties on the November 2016 ballot

America likes to pride itself as a beacon of democracy, but our dirty little secret is just how undemocratic our electoral system actually is. As shown on the map above, fifteen percent of the country’s congressional districts lack one of the two major parties on this fall’s ballot (a larger version of this map is here). That means voters in one out of every seven districts won’t even have a nominal choice between Democrats and Republicans, let alone vote in a genuinely competitive race. But it’s not an uncommon occurrence because both parties frequently fail to recruit even a token candidate in districts that heavily favor the opposing party, and in some states it can cost thousands of dollars just to get on the ballot.

Yet it shows that our electoral system of winner-take-all, single-member districts is fundamentally flawed. Even when both major parties field candidates, most of them are little more than sacrificial lambs. Daily Kos Elections currently rates just 51 of 435 races, or 12 percent, as potentially competitive this year. Most congressional election outcomes are effectively already decided long before most Americans cast their ballots. Gerrymandering exacerbates this problem, but most districts are uncompetitive, even in states where redistricting is carried out on a nonpartisan basis. And “top-two” primaries in states like California routinely produce same-party runoffs where participation falls.

It shouldn’t have to be this way. It’s simply undemocratic that roughly one in seven voters won’t even get to make a symbolic choice between the two major parties, and that the vast remainder face an election where the outcome was never remotely in doubt. Competition is a fundamental aspect of true electoral democracy, and we need to reform our electoral system to ensure that every voter has the opportunity to make a meaningful choice.

Most democracies use proportional representation, where parties win seats in proportion to their share of the popular vote, usually allowing for more than two dominant parties. There are many ways to achieve proportional representation. Germany and New Zealand, for instance, allow voters to vote both for a local representative for their own districts and also to cast ballots for party “lists” that elect several hundred representatives on a national basis. Every voter, therefore, has the opportunity to participate in relatively competitive elections for the national seats, and the existence of those same seats undermines any attempts at gerrymandering.