we want to elect AN individual to represent OUR OWN interests in Washington

My dream world answer:
http://www.directrep.org/

Wow… You’re sounding even more cynical than me!

I would say that Americans are more culturally libertarian than Europeans. In many European nations, the parliamentary systems are arranged such that there may never be a majority party, and you often have to form “coalition governments” to get anything done.

In America, there may be enough Libertarians to make a Libertarian minority party a viable force in such a coalition government.

However, that doesn’t work in “representative” democracy, because those Libertarians won’t be elected. In, say, a proportional representation parliamentary system, they might make it into office.

Granted, to your point, parliamentary systems haven’t exactly shown an inability to grow government, so the question of whether or not some of America’s natural libertarianism would be enough to overcome that is highly theoretical, and I can’t empirically substantiate that the effect would be as large as I would hope.

Again, I think there may be some marginal improvement in toying with the voting system. However, a lot of Libertarians seem to believe that we’re more popular than we really are, and that implementing an alternate voting system will finally be the change that gets the party into power.

My point is that even if it passes, it’s still of marginal benefit. Our system will still be biased towards two parties, and that a LOT of change is necessary to affect that on more than a trivial level.

Voting system reform is a laudable goal, but it’s only one tiny bit of the puzzle, not the whole thing.

The problem is that the average person wants government to do more than it should. Joe and Jane Average want too many safety nets, too many benefits and entitlements, and too many laws. And, they want others to pay all the taxes. Politicians are skilled at getting the Averages to vote them into office, and we get continual expansions of: government power, entitlements and benefits, prison populations, tax rates on the rich, and government debts.

Since we cannot change the opinions and behaviors of the tens of millions of Joe and Jane Averages, we are fated to become a much larger version of modern Greece.

There is some reason to believe that approval voting, for instance (or even better, range voting (AKA score voting)) could actually do some good, and there are (were?) some libertarians in Colorado who were making some efforts in that direction.

http://rangevoting.org/Duverger.html