Give everybody 100 votes and let them 'spend' their votes where they want. The hardcore Dems could give all 100 to the Democrat on the ticket, likewise for Repubs.

Normal people could split their votes 60-40, 70-30 or whatever. Or even 20-30 and neither of the idiots gets any more.

Then we could really look at intensity. Suppose a candidate won with 5000 voters giving him 200,000 votes, with the loser getting 150,000. We would know that of the 500,000 available votes only 350,000 got spent, showing some considerable disdain for both candidates.

I also think voting procedures should be difficult and complex with the ballots spoiled by the incompetent easily rejected. But that's a whole nuther topic.

Jeff, the two-party system has been with us from practically the beginning, and will be with us as long as the Constitution remains relatively unchanged regarding such matters. Ours is not a parliamentary system. Here, the coalitions are formed before the elections – in most other Representative Republics, those coalitions are formed after the election.

The extreme electoral mood swings that result in Britain (and other nations) nationalizing industries under one Prime Minister, then selling them off under another, then re-nationalizing some of them under the next PM are prevalent in the United States, too, but our system does a better job of keeping those extremes in check, and it was even better in this regard before the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified.

Vidyohs wrote an excellent article on ways to drastically improve representation in our government on a different thread of this blog.

Don't be too hard on yourself, it happens to all of us now and again. Can't tell you the number of gulps I have had to emit when I read my post that was done gone and posted. I was just poking light hearted fun.

Peace be to you.

No, I fully deserve Vidyoh's bitch-slapping of my error.

A political sceince prof, eh? Well sir, you've confused me by your assertion that someone has a "first amendment write". Just where would one find the granting or admission of that write, and how does one go about getting it?

I just did a depo that lasted for four hours and the deponent repeated, to every question, "On the advice of my attorney, I exercise my 5th amendment privilege to remain silent and not answer the question……etc."

After the deposition I asked the deponent's attorney why the deviation in the wording and she had zero clue.

Oh lordy lordy, we have writes and privileges, but no rights?

Whahab de wurl be com'en too?

Voting between two non-entities is a senseless exercise, the None of the Above group has my support. If NOTA wins, scrap the election and start over, as some one said above, with totally new candidates. It may be costly, but less costly than having an idiot in the presidency.

To help create more competition for my vote in congressional races, I'd like to see the equivalent to a huge signing bonus where the challenger wins a one-time prize of a couple million dollars if they knock off an incumbent. The prize money would be cheap compared to the cost of keeping incumbent congresscritters, fully experienced in manipulating the levers of power, in office.

No need to say more, the circularity of this argument is perplexing. Perpetuum mobile!

But maybe there are ways around that. Don points out that the effort of voting filters out low-intensity preferences. I recently voted in Texas' "two-step" primary/caucus which gives more weight to voters with strong enough preferences to spend more time at it.

Perhaps these ideas could be made more granular? Cast a ballot remotely for one vote. Come to the polling place for two. Additionally write and publish the rationale behind your vote for three. Brave the "Ring of Fire" for four. And so on.

Another way to record the intensity of preferences would be to give the option to multiply one's vote by 10 or 100 at say 100 USD or 1000 USD respectively.

Answer: Provide some citizens with the perfect moral excuse of sitting back home doing nothing as Monday morning political quarterbacks… so easy, so comfortable… and so tenured?

Only Florida's use of the single non-transferable vote with plurality winner allowed George W. Bush to win in 2000. Any other voting system would have handed the election to Gore. That's not necessarily an argument against our plurality system, just a statement that a different system would result in a different "definitive" ordering.

Of course some of those alternative systems do incorporate the intensity of preferenes Boudreaux mentioned, particularly the Borda count.

And, Mike, voting is but one of many ways to participate in politics. Boudreux participates quite regularly in American politics by exercising his first amendment write to send letters to the editor. Quite plausibly he has more influence that way than he does by voting. So please relax–this political science prof says voting is not the end-all, be-all of good citizenship.

My proposal is that (a) a new election must be scheduled forthwith and (b) all of the people who lost to NOTA are disqualified from ANY public office for the term of the office that was being sought. Thus, a vote for NOTA will mean something.

For some baffling reason, a huge number of people are firmly convinced that if and only if you wait in line to mark a piece of paper once every few years, you're fully qualified to engage in any discussion of issues. Otherwise, you're beneath pond scum. Never mind whether you know a damn thing about what you're talking about, whether you read the news, whether you read books, whether you ever use the gray mass between your ears. Either vote or shut up. Brilliant logic.

The two party lock on elections is slowly killing us. Political parties have stolen representative government from the people and replaced it with party government.