Elections, How They Should Be Done

Sure, the electoral college may be outdated and need to go. A bigger part of the problem is that all of the mainstream media, the big newspapers and major TV stations, are owned by a handful of extremely wealthy people, and they control the narrative. Another part of the problem is that the American public is poorly informed, partly because of the educational system, partly due to its isolation from the rest of the world, partly due to the American attitude that stupid people are just as smart as smart people.
For whatever reasons, our elections don’t tend to work out well. Democracy is a noble ideal, but people are only people, and prone to mistakes. Elections should be a method for finding the best choice, the best candidate, and if we could eliminate the guesswork, that would be a good thing, right?
I think it should be done like this. Around about the end of January (really, election campaigns should not last more that a year. That’s ridiculous) there should be nominations. Anybody can submit the name of any eligible candidate they like (this could run concurrently for all other offices, local state and national), as long as they meet the legal requirements.
Then you could have a couple of elimination rounds. Have everybody text their vote, or do it on-line, like in a telethon or talent competition. Have everybody list their top ten, and candidates that didn’t make anybody’s list except their own and their family would be out. That should be good enough to get rid of those candidates who are totally not serious. A Vernon Supreme or two might squeak through the first rounds, but basically, you’d have lowered the numbers from thousands to hundreds.
Then, they are all given a psychiatric evaluation, and an IQ test, the results of which would be made public, or maybe not, but anybody with a score lower than 100 on an IQ test, or a shaky psychiatric evaluation, just gets dumped by the judges at that point. It’s a basic thing.
Then, those remaining all get audited. We need to check not only for financial improprieties, but also conflict of interest. If there’s anything criminal, they are summarily eliminated by the judges, as above. If it’s not illegal, but just embarrassing, well, they can stay in if they want to. Let the public decide.
Now we’re up to May, and it starts to get interesting. The candidates have to perform in a bunch of simulations – alien invasions, zombie uprisings, stuff like that, sure, but also more real time events. We’ve got the technology to make this an incredible show.
Then another round of voting from the public. By now, we should be down to 20 or 30 candidates, and we know they are all legit, and intelligent, and psychologically capable.
And so, the debates begin. Once a week, each time on a specific topic. The environment deserves a couple of hours. Foreign policy deserves a couple of hours. Race deserves a couple of hours. And so on.
After each debate, another round of voting. By about September, we should be down to one candidate, with people pretty much in agreement that it is a totally awesome choice.
Then, the major parties could choose a candidate each, if they like. But at least one would be vetted.