You could also solve the narrow-preferences problem by having ranked ballots. If a candidate gets more than double the average number of votes, then any other votes received go to the next highest candidates.
This might break strategy free-ness. You could have the candidate has a list of alternatives, who get any surplus votes. Under certain assumptions, the power of a voting bloc is equal to the square of the number of votes held, so, another option would be to give votes equal to the square root the number of vote received. Another issue is that the minority representation would change from election to election. Depending on how concentrated the voters were, some elections might distribute 1000 votes, but in others, they might only distribute 500. One thing is that 51% of the resulting legislature still has 100% of the power. Sharing power more evenly would be another improvement. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
