I spent this Monday doing something that I had never done before: Lobbying Congressmen. I visited 3 representatives, 2 from West Texas and one from Dallas, and Senator John Cornyn. A common theme came up, they all, in some form, argued with the statistic that 80% of Texans would like to see comprehensive sex education in Texas schools.

To me it seemed that all of them were worried about offending their  base support  who fund their campaigns, which, more than likely, are the extreme radical right who are against comprehensive sex education. As a student of Political Science, I could not help but wonder if our governmental institutions were set up differently would we have a federally mandated comprehensive sex education policy?

The United States is a single member district majoritarian form of government whose elections usually result in one party control in the legislative branch. The way that districts are set up force Congressmen to be very loyal to their core constituency or they will not be re-elected. Because of this, comprehensive sex education can be seen as a risky issue for most Republicans and many moderate Democrats. For this reason, I believe that no federal legislation requiring comprehensive sex education has been enacted.

But what if our government was elected differently?

Proportional representation is where the amount of seats a party receives is directly correlated with its percentage of the vote. For example, if a party wins 27% of the vote, they will receive around 27% of the seats (give or take as most countries who use the proportional representation system require a party to reach a threshold, usually around 5%, to receive seats). This system, on average, results in multiple parties, none of which receive enough seats to have a majority. Thus, they have to form a coalition with other parties. This results in the government being much more moderate and more representative of the entire population. Mostly, the members of the legislator are responsible to the entire electorate not just a small constituency. Because of these two reasons, i believe that comprehensive sex education legislation would have been passed long ago if they United States had proportional representation elections. The electorate could not blame one single party if they were angry about the policy as the government would be a coalition. Also, the policy would probably not be controversial at all if legislators did not have to worry about a local constituency as a majority of the entire electorate in the US agrees with comprehensive sex education.

I believe that the US would have comprehensive sex education legislation if our government was set up like the United Kingdom's Westminster Majoritarian Parliamentary system also. In this system, Members of Parliament are elected in small single member districts just like the US but usually one party takes control of the government meaning both the legislative branch and the executive branch. The opposition then has little it can do to stop the legislation of the governing party. Members of Parliament are expected to vote along party lines so legislation flows through easily. If the US was under this system, the Democrats would have been in control at some point in recent history and more than likely passed comprehensive sex education legislation.

Unfortunately, I don't see our form of government changing anytime soon so its up to us to change the minds of the stubborn Congressmen. Fight on Advocates!