Let's start out with voting. Though perhaps the most intuitive, ours is not the only way to vote; there are many possible voting schemes. Though it's been proven that no voting scheme can be perfect, we can do better.
As we have it everyone gets to cast a single vote for a single candidate. If there are two candidates that they like they must choose between them. If we were directly electing representatives this would be great at ensuring proportional representation (for example, if distributing 100 seats, 48% of the vote for Democrats means that they get 48 seats). However, in electing a single president, our system is easily disrupted by third-party candidates "splitting the vote."
One of the simplest alternatives is having each voter rank their choices first through Nth in the case of N candidates. For example if 55% prefer Gore to Bush he would win, even if 10% prefer Nader to Gore.
Approval voting is similar, though rather than a rating each candidate simply gets a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. The candidate with the most thumbs up wins; this avoids the possibility (however implausible) of having a majority prefer Gore to Bush, but also having a majority prefer Nader to Gore, but also having a majority prefer Bush to Nader.
Beyond how the votes are cast we can draw issue with how they're counted. The electoral college has been opposed by the strong majority of Americans for decades, according to the Gallup Poll. Proponents of the electoral college (according to Wikipedia), argue that it is "an important, distinguishing feature of federalism in the United States," giving a halfway point between a direct election and a congressional appointment for the office of the president. Furthermore it ensures that the small states are not marginalized.
In principle the electoral college prevents a politician from campaigning only to the big states; the twelve most populous states contain over half of Americans. Suppose I run for president, and my platform is to dramatically increase the taxes in the thirty least populous states while abolishing federal taxes in the most populous states (this is probably unconstitutional, but you get the idea). If there were no other issues, I would presumably win all of the large states in a landslide, and thus the popular vote. The electoral college gives extra say to the small states to make them relevant. This is the same reason that we have a Senate rather than just a House of Representatives.
However, people are not rational voters and they make choices based on a variety of issues so I would argue that this advantage is overshadowed by the disadvantages of the electoral college system.
The overrepresentation of small states is dramatic. Effectively each person in Montana gets triple the vote of a person in Texas. It also marginalizes almost all of the voters. Voting Democrat in a blue state is redundant while voting Republican in a blue state is futile. Only swing states are important since other states are so predictable. On the rare occasion that a blue state votes for a Republican (as in Reagan vs. Mondale) the votes in that state still didn't matter because the candidate was strong enough to carry the election using red states and swing states.
The presidential primaries, which at this point are a half-year spectacle or more, already choose candidates as if the vote were popular. The preferences of Florida, which is crucially important, are not held above those of California and Texas, which are completely predictable. It wouldn't make for much of a show, but a more electable candidate could be found by only counting swing states; that's where the vast majority of general election campaigning will be anyway.
Switching to a popular vote would be trivial, since we already count all the votes. In addition to making our representation more uniform this removes the possibility of faithless electors. No faithless elector has ever changed the outcome of a presidential election (and many states even have laws against the practice) it seems foolish to invite the possibility.
Additionally, a popular vote makes it easier for minor parties to accumulate recognition, as they do not need to be the majority in any single state to be acknowledged.
A strict two-party systems makes strange bedfellows; in order to vote for the openly Christian candidate, a working class man must vote against his own economic interests (that is, be taxed more and see less for it). Similarly a pharmaceutical corporation, to experience lower taxes, must support the party that opposes teaching biology in public schools.
Having only two parties disincentivizes compromise. The Republican congress has shown us that through filibustering and strict party unity they can essentially shut down any legislation that is not in line with their agenda - and since the Democrats are the ones trying to implement changes this means that the Republicans are winning the political game.
The existence of additional parties (the most obvious would be a fiscally conservative but socially tolerant - Libertarian - party and a fiscally liberal and socially conservative - Orwellian? - party, though there are of course more than two degrees of freedom) would give voters more freedom in what they want the government to do, as well as giving legislators more angles from which to pursue compromise.
This is a dimension present in the legislatures of many other countries, though I'll have to explore that in detail in a later post.
The existence of additional parties (the most obvious would be a fiscally conservative but socially tolerant - Libertarian - party and a fiscally liberal and socially conservative - Orwellian? - party, though there are of course more than two degrees of freedom) would give voters more freedom in what they want the government to do, as well as giving legislators more angles from which to pursue compromise.
This is a dimension present in the legislatures of many other countries, though I'll have to explore that in detail in a later post.
There's plenty more political dysfunction in this country to talk about but this is about as much as I can expose you to at once in good conscience. Perhaps at a later date we'll compare our year-and-a-half-long, multi-billion-dollar, TV-attack-ad-filled, presidential selection routine to that of some countries.
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