Three Ways to Improve American Politics
I am writing this as a citizen of a world (and also as someone with a degree in Political Science) that no matter where we live are strongly impacted by whatever America does and whatever happens in America.
There are no easy solutions to the problems facing America today as I wrote in THE FIFTH COLUMN: Can America Be Saved.
These are the three most important changes I think need to be made to American electoral politics, although all three would require a tremendous amount of political will to make them happen.
1 – Eliminate politicians from controlling the electoral process
Elections cannot be free and democratic if they are run by politicians that benefit from their results, especially when they have a history of gerrymandering boundaries and suppressing the voting ability of their opponents voters. The United States needs a single neutral non-partisan non-political agency similar to Elections Canada to oversee their federal elections.
2 – Eliminate money from controlling the electoral process
Money should not be a gatekeeper to the electoral process. Elections should not be something that can be bought. Voting should not be like shopping where whoever spends the most on marketing gets the most customers. There need to be reasonable limits on spending by parties and candidates. There also needs to be reasonable limits on donations to political parities and candidates including a ban on corporate donations and the elimination of PACs and Super PACs. If people want to donate they should donate to the candidate of their choice or to a registered political party..
For example Canada’s spending and donation limits are outlined here:
Understanding spending limits – Elections Canada
Limits on Contributions – 2025 – Elections Canada
3 – Eliminate the domination of two parties in the electoral process
The American two party system, which shuts out any other party’s candidates, with a few notable exceptions like Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and a few left leaning Democrats who might be considered Social Democrats, limits the representation of Americans political views to those of the two major parties and leaves many voters not voting for their choice of candidate or party but for the lessor evil of the two parties they do not support, and leaves many voters feeling unrepresented and that their votes do not count.
The solution to this, at least for the House of Representatives, would be the implementation of Proportional representation that would see all Americans political views represented and all votes counting.
Proportional representation would be difficult to do in the Senate with only two Senators per state, although possibly feasible with 4 Senators per state. Alternatively Ranked voting would at least allow voters to select their preferred candidate as their first choice.
And then there is the Presidency with the archaic Electoral College system which can, and has, allowed the candidate with the fewer votes (of the actual voters) to become President. Why there has not been a popular uprising against this I will never understand. Clearly since proportional representative cannot be used for a single position, the obvious choice is a direct popular vote of citizens using ranked voting to elect the President, allowing every voter to vote for their preferred candidate as their first choice without losing the opportunity vote for their choice of the two leading candidates at the end of the process.
Postscript –The Senate
When I was looking at the impact of the two party system on the representation of American voters political positions and philosophies in Congress I could not help but think about the Senate and the issue of Representation by population. I am aware the Senate was not intended to be based on rep by pop but I was not aware of just how egregious the rejection of that principal was, considering that the Senate has as much political power as the House of Representatives and indeed individual Senators seem to be more influential than individual Members of the House of Representative.
As of 2025 the population of the 50 American states is 347.3 million (Source), while the population of the 25 least populated states is under 10 million (Source). The math says the voters in the least populated states have over 30 times the representation in the Senate than the voters in the most populated states. Again I have to say I do not understand why there has not been a popular uprising against this among the 97% of excessively under-represented voters.
I have no solution for this but it seems to me to be an affront to democracy. I sometimes wonder if Americans think their political system is god given and they have no right to change it.
