I have three simple ideas that, I think, would completely level the playing field when it comes to Presidential elections. Would they ever happen? Of course not. The two party system is hopelessly biased and corrupt, and allows for major profits on both sides of the spectrum.
Sorry, I don’t buy that Democrats are squeaky clean. They are, after all, politicians. Republicans are just as bad, don’t get me wrong. When there’s room for corruption and money, two components that a congressman or candidate really appreciates, look out.
So what are my suggestions? Simple:
1.) Get rid of the electoral college, and go by popular vote alone. Simple.
2.) There should be an election for the top, say, four or five candidates for the position. Not by party, but by the entire country.
3.) Each person that is elected as a candidate is then provided with a set amount of media allotment (newspaper, magazine, television) by the election process. They are given money for election purposes (banners, flyers, signs, travel), but are not allowed to use any of it for any kind of media use. They are not allowed to have any more time in the media than is given to them by the election.
Can you see the advantages to this setup? Each candidate is chosen by the majority vote of the entire country. We could set rules for how they need to apply for the candidacy, and media allotments, etc for that as well. Why not?
But then, you’ve taken out the biased lobbying, jockying, and money grubbing by candidates for more campaign money. They have no need to be in any person’s pocket because, hey, they’re not allowed to use more than is given to them anyway. They can’t make deals with lobbyists or large companies.
Wow, you’re thinking it’d be a pretty decent system, aren’t you? So why hasn’t something like this happened a long time ago?
Because. There’s money involved in the process. And who controls new laws and the process by which we could get a decent system like this in place? Why, it’s the very people we’d be causing to lose millions of dollars each campaign.
Now now, we can’t have that, can we?