Is proportional voting the same thing as ranked voting? We had that in NYC for the first time during last year's election for Mayor. I'm relatively pleased with the outcome, even though this is a small sample size.
It's like in the Constitution where the line goes, "...all men are created equal..." It really depended on who got to be defined as "men" and who got to do the defining.
America has evolved into a democracy (which we're trying to hold on to) but certainly wasn't founded as one.