IRV for better or worse now in Minneapolis and St. Paul

So, as was discussed on a post last month, IRV is NOT proportional voting. We seemed to arrive at the conclusion that proportional voting is better than plurality (a subtype of which we currently use nicknamed "first past the post" voting). What's the difference? From what I gather, a vote in proportional voting has the potential for sending MORE THAN ONE representative in voting for a single office. For example, and this is probably extreme, pretend we are voting for our House representatives. In Minnesota we have eight House representatives and all right now are either Democrat or Republican. Each district votes for two-year terms and the first with a majority in a two man/woman race or plurality in 2+ wins the seat and represents the entire district. What about the other votes? If a Republican wins in my district with 60% of votes and 20% goes to the Republican and 20% goes to an Independent. Where do the other 40% of votes go? The answer: under the current system they disappear. Proportional Voting takes these votes and gives them to the House in the form of another person (I'm not quite sure yet how, but maybe 10 people go per district or perhaps districts would need to be removed and simply vote by state). So in the last example, maybe 6 Republicans go, 2 Democrats, and 2 independents and then my district is represented not completely, but more than it was in the plurality system. A particular type of proportional voting, party list, is show here as an example of which other countries use this voting system:

"There are many variations on seat allocation within party-list proportional representation. The three most common are:

• The D'Hondt method (or Jefferson's method), used in Albania Croatia, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Austria, Finland and Poland, among other places;
• The Sainte-Laguë method (or Webster's method), used in many Scandinavian countries, New Zealand, and the German state of Bremen;
• The largest remainder (LR) methods, including the Hamilton method."

1) Barran, Madeleine, "St. Paul voters re-elect Coleman, approve IRV" http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/11/03/st-paul-mayor/

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_representation