I find it hard to fathom how in one sentence, you speak against political parties, and then in the next, you propose proportional representation as a solution.

I am very much in favour of electoral reform, but the most common suggestion is always proportional representation which I cannot support. Under proportional representation, I am no longer voting for my personal representative to government, I am forced to vote explicitly for a party. I lose having anyone directly responsible to me (or my district, anyway), and it becomes impossible for an independent to be elected.

So what are the answers to ensure minority representation? I don't know, but here are some ideas that I think are worth exploring:

1. cutting the number of electoral districts in half, but giving seats to the two top vote getters in each district.

2. preferential voting. It opens the door for third parties. I can give my first preference to a fringe party while still ranking my favoured major party ahead of the alternative. People always say that it is too hard to count, but Australia has managed for nearly a century.

3. Any candidate (within some area) that gets more than 100000 votes (or some appropriate threshold) is elected. This is sort of like #1, but with larger areas and more candidates.

4. Additional direct democracy; technology should open up new possibilities in this area.

These are simply suggestions to think about and should not be considered mutually exclusive.

I'm an advocate of a hybrid between your #4 and #2. People can vote on most issues directly, with the ability to delegate particular issues or categories of issue to a number of representatives, ideally experts in their respective fields. The delegated authority can be issued or revoked by each voter at will, as many times as they want.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't solve the problem of media controlling public opinion by what they report and advertise.

I'd get rid of political parties if I could, but I also think it's basically impossible, so the question then becomes how you deal with them. The best way to deal with them may not be at all how things would look if you could get rid of them. That's how I go from wanting to ban them to proposing proportional representation.

Fair enough. I prefer to think about what can be done to reduce their influence. I wouldn't actually ban them even if I could, freedom of association and all that, but it would be nicer if they didn't matter so much.