> if the US and UK are your examples of "failed" democracies these experts obviously haven't considered the full range of how voting works.

"Obviously?" Perhaps they have considered it properly and have reasonably concluded both systems are utterly failed in terms of representing the views of the electorate. As an outsider looking in US politics appears equally broken, just sometimes in different ways.

So now let me stay on ground I am more sure of, the UK. It's one of the least representative "democracies" around.

For most of the electorate it simply doesn't matter who they vote for, it's pointless. Most seats are "safe". Where I currently live, if you have anything but Brexit-Tory views don't bother as the seat hasn't changed hands in years. So consider yourself entirely disenfranchised. We get especially poor candidates as a result - from both parties. A cardboard cutout would probably get elected if wearing a blue rosette.

If you have Tory views, and live in one of those nice £1m+ warehouse flat conversions you are probably now in a permanently safe Labour inner-city seat, and are equally disenfranchised. cardboard equally electable, just give it a red rosette.

The percentage in a given constituency who get the government they voted for is often quite shocking. CGP Grey did a video on this if I recall correctly.

What does that do to politics? Well, it's total war, total victory and total annihilation only. Parties only treat the electorate as even vaguely interesting in the 10% of seats that might change hands.

No one negotiates. Beforehand or otherwise, unless every other avenue to grab power has failed. System working as intended then as it tends to reinforce the two party status quo.

"Woo, we got elected, just." Now it's simple. Every policy of the previous government was crap. Even the really good ones that were proven to be working. No matter, we didn't think them up, so get rid of the policy with extreme prejudice. We'll rename the same policy when writing our next manifesto so that we can imply we did invent it next time.

> namely it forces pre-negotiation and coalitions before questions are put to the voters.

When did the US last have a coalition, or even pre-negotiation?

In the UK we had one, successfully, during WW2. Since then there has been one, but a selection of minority governments. The recent coalition is widely considered to have been a failure. Essentially we got Tory govt, with a few rough edges knocked off. Tories got a convenient kicking partner.

> the electorate can make a reasonably informed decision about whether A or B is better.

Gosh that's a positive view of how it works. In our media-first, FPTP, system it is much more about the media friendly face, nice smile, soundbites and dog whistles. Interviews become an excruciating exercise of answering the question you'd like to have been asked like it's a Monty Python sketch.

May gave us a comical example of doing soundbites and interviews wrong with the "strong and stable government" line that everyone, including the media, were sick of on the very first day of campaign. After a term or two "it's about time we gave the other guys a chance" and "I'm sick of these idiots" becomes a significant influence.

In short I am firmly in favour of electoral reform and adoption of PR (and not the second-class incarnation of it we were given a referendum about during the coalition). I'd quite like to figure out a way to weaken party politics too, but I digress. In my twenties I was quite in favour for FPTP as I felt it enabled more to be done. Nowadays I'd like a lot less done and a system that a) encourages consensus day to day and b) provides a parliament representative of the far wider range of views commonly held than two diametrically opposed parties. This became far, far too long so I'll spare you the deeper reasoning in favour of PR. :)

My own politics is a coalition - I like some parts of Tory, Labour, Green and LibDem. Even during my most focused support of one party I found some of their policies were utterly bonkers. I think that's the case with most aside from the tiny, tiny minority who actually join parties.