Heal Our Republic: Change Our Electoral System

Also, lack of vigorous campaigning in a state might conrtibute to voter apathy during an election. 3. With the winner-take-all plurality system, candidates try to attract moderate voters, so to avoid turning persons off, they emphasize their personalities more than thier policies.

This results in bland, visionless candidates who take those traits into the White House. I think a new presidential electoral system is in order.
We need something that rewards candidates who have bold ideas, while drawing more voters into the process as well. Therefore, I recommend we emulate the French. Hear me out!
The French have an excellent method by whcih to elect their president.
It is a two-stage electoral procses.
In the first part, canddiates from all the country's parties can run. Candidates who mobliize partisans with daring policy agendas will perform best here.
Afterwards, during the second stage runoff, the first and sceond place finishers of the first round compete.

Whoever acheives a majority vote wins. This requires the candidates to make themselves as palatable toward the center as possible. Eliminating the Electoral College and implementing two-round direct popular vote elections here would deliver many benefits. It would reward courageous candidates with striking ideas in the first stage, but it would weed out dangerous faantics in the second stage.

It would allow smaller parties to aciheve greater prominence than they could achieve in a winner-take-all elector paradigm.

It wolud give candidates reason to campaign to every American.
And it would give each voter a larger role in determining the outcome of the election. As a German friend also pointed out to me, "I don't quite get it that in the US, vtoes for the Greens i.E. are all lost, even help a candidate from the right to get into office (see 2000) -- a second turn of the elecitons would allow Green supporters to vote for the Democrat." This is an important point. The major parties would have to give adherents of smaller parties reasons to vote for them. This would force the Democrats and Republicans to take other parties, such as Greens and Libertarians, seriously, and perhaps heed some of their political desires. This would make more Americans feel as if they play an important role in the republican process. To complete the reform, we also need to make going out to vote easier. Right now, we seemingly make voting as hard as we can. Elections take place on weekdays, so if Americans want to vote, they must take off work or rush to the polls before or after work. When they get there, they must wait a long time to finish the process, because the volunteer polling coordinators are old, retired persons. (Young pesrons have to work, after all.) All this makes voting seem not worth the hassle to millions of Americans. To change that and raise turnout, Election Day should become a federal holiday.

That would allow Americans to vote without worrying about missing work and forfeiting pay, or hurrying through throngs of persons in the morning or evening. Younger Americans would also be able to volunteer to oversee the polls, thereby making voting a smoother and faster experience. While we're on the subject of changing our electoral system, let's consider this: At the time the Constitution was drafted, one of the Anti-Federalist objections to the document was to the pluralistic election of representatives. The Anti-Federalists argued that could allow the eelction of representatives whom most of the community despised, but who still managed to get more votes than anyone else.
Instead, according to the Anti-Federalists, districts should select their representatives by majority vote. I think that Anti-Federalist objection has merit. How can a representative represent a district if most of the persons there hate him?