Why do I care?

I am neither a lawyer nor US citizen, but as far as my critical thinking goes, I believe the US electoral system has a flaw that forces electors to have only two useful choices among all parties running for presidency. This flaw has been corrected in younger democratic systems, but somehow it still exists in US and as far as I've seen there are no meaningful proposals to fix it.

There are two main reasons to personally care about the electoral system of another country. The first and most obvious one is the fact that currently the USA is still the most powerful and influential nation in the World, so it affects us all. Specially in the Western hemisphere. The second reason is the large amount of complaints about an ongoing problem that already has a solution. Not a perfect solution but a great improvement considering the current status. As someone who consumes quite a lot of US political media, it's almost impossible to not see both the problem and complaints about the problem in lots of places in both sides of the political spectrum.

The Text:

The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; -- the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; -- The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.-- The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

There are small changes given by the 20th and 25th amendments, but those are not relevant for this topic as they regard the transfer from March to January the deadline to solve a deadlock and special conditions for the cabinet to remove an acting president, such as mental incapacity.

My changes in an Amendment Proposal:

1. Abolish the office of Elector

Although been created as a safeguard to prevent ill intention politicians that get popular support via populist rallies from taking office as Tyrants of the Majority, it creates a security layer that does nothing other than enraging the people when electoral technicalities such as Gerrymandering when the Electors decide against the total result of popular vote. There's also the argument about preventing voting fraud, but such mechanisms were made to protect ballots in a time of far slower communication than today, making them quite useless.

2. Establish a minimum support of 50% for executive office(not only the President) among all valid votes.

Several modern republics already adopt this mechanism to prevent agglutination in the same two political parties as votes for parties other than the larger two become de-facto useless. For that reason no executive candidate shall have less than half of total valid votes.

Definition of a valid vote: a vote that is cast for a candidate(or a proposal) that is actually running; A vote that can be counted for a registered candidate; blank, scratched or nonsense-written ballots are not valid.

If no candidate gets over 50% of popular vote, the two most voted candidates shall be the only ones running in a second round of election to be done four weeks after the first.

This is just my personal opinions. Feel free to comment below.

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