If you believe there’s a world outside of the United States and you’re somewhere you can be reading this blog today, you’re probably aware of the fact that there was a parliamentary election in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland yesterday. And it’s resulted in a hung parliament, meaning that no one party got a majority.

How can this be possible, ask Americans, those incapable of believing there are more than two parties? Because not only are there three substantial parties in the UK, each garnering more than 20% of the nationwide popular vote, but there are actually 10 parties who earned seats in the British parliament this go-round. And three more who had a seat, but lost it. Plus a true independent, unaffiliated from any party.

For decades, the only independents able to win seats in the American Congress have been those who drop their major-two-party affiliation after establishing a long career. The lone possible exception to this is Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, a Social Democrat who knows well enough to run as a straight independent in our system. Because apparently voting in large blocs for a third party is as appealing as hemlock for the American public.

What about the British system engenders this kind of vibrance in their democracy? Part of it must surely be involved with the proliferation of nationalist factions in different regions of the country. Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales each have a seat-winning nationalist party that advocates moving toward dissolution with the mother country, one of them to the point where they refuse to even take the seats that they win. But this isn’t the whole story. There are other factional parties, even the Greens, who win seats in Parliament. And there are three enormous parties who get to share the national stage.

One could argue that part of it is about the size of the constituency. The average MP represents 75,000 people, while the average US Representative votes on behalf of 650,000. That’s pretty much a scale of magnitude difference and ensures the people with particular local or factional appeal are left out of the system altogether. And while it’s hard to imagine a US Congress housing thousands of representatives, maybe an intermediary body could be forged to give a more robust voice to the people.

Granted, there are significant issues with the British system as well. For one, the fact that the Prime Minister stems directly out of the parliamentary majority means that people must choose between prioritizing their local representative over their Prime Minister selection or vice versa, if they prefer respective candidates from different parties. They may love their local Labour MP and want Nick Clegg of the Lib Dems to take over 10 Downing Street and they are forced to choose between these desires. Not ideal.

Additionally, the lack of proportional representation in favor of regional apportionment means that the relative influence of parties is often grossly misrepresented. This is most obviously illustrated by those Liberal Democrats in 2010, who earned 23% of the vote and just 9% of the seats. Meanwhile, the Conservatives got 47% of seats for just 36% of the vote and Labour won 40% with only 29%. The only argument I can see against proportional representation is the idea that it will limit the influence of specific regions or constituent areas.

But this argument fails on face empirically. Most of the specific regional parties would actually increase their influence under prop rep. For example, the Scottish National Party (SNP) won 6 seats, but would be awarded 11 under proportional representation. In fact, every party winning seats would still win seats under that system, plus four more. And people would have even more reason to vote for smaller parties, knowing their vote would count no matter where they voted or what the status of their constituency might be.

So there’s a lot to be learned from the British system, as well as much that could be improved. I think my ultimate bottom line is that we rebelled from a system with more robust democracy to create our own. Granted, the colonies weren’t being particularly enfranchised at the time, but we could’ve waited to be part of a system with a double-digit number of contentious parties. And such a system, when it produces hung parliaments like this year, ensures that every tiny party could potentially be able to get enormous concessions from the major power players.

It’s almost enough to make you start dredging the waters for tea as well as oil.