What if the Parties changed the primary system to a rolling vote system, where voters could choose who they want and then change their vote at any point for several months. Basically voting opens in all states on January 1? Vote by mail, in person, web, whatever. Then, until May 31, you can change your vote as many times as you like. Meanwhile the candidates campaign wherever they want, have debates, the usual, and everyone can see the vote tally live. Candidates could see what regions they need to focus on, or where people have not been voting.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

I like the idea, but it sounds like integrity would be a hard thing to guarantee.

It would be a pure administrative nightmare to allow people to change their vote......let alone allow them to change it an unlimited amount of times.

In your scenario, would the real outcome still be determined by the electoral college or are you proposing a pure popular vote?

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Screw Change!! Let's have a Seamless Transition of Power and Policy.. John McSame in 2008!

How about abolishing the primaries and move to a system with all candidates, democrat republican and other, and have multiple rounds? First round everyone can join, second round all smaller candidates who together had less votes than the biggest candidates drop out, third round same etc. I think that is similar to how they do it in France.

Example:
Results popular vote round one:
Washington 23%
Adams 20%
Jefferson 18%
Madison 12%
Monroe 8%
Jackson 6%
Van Buren 4%
Harrison 3%
Other 6%

Now the candidates from bottom to top with combined less than 23% drop out. That leaves 5 candidates in the next round:
Adams 32%
Washington 28%
Jefferson 21%
Monroe 14%
Madison 5%

Next round leaves 3 candidates:
Washington 52%
Adams 32%
Jefferson 16%

Washington has over 50% so he won.

I think that a system like this will persuade more people to vote for the smaller candidates and give those a better chance because in the first round your vote is never 'wasted', after all there will likely be another round (most elections will take 2 or 3 rounds I estimate). What do you think?

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When WW2 had ended everyone joined the resistance.

Here's an idea:

Have the General Election in November.

People vote.

Count those votes.

Whoever gets the most votes wins...

But then you could easily get situations where someone with 25% of the vote wins. Thats not democratic.

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When WW2 had ended everyone joined the resistance.

It's creative, but it sounds kind of like an administrative circus.

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"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."
Matthew 5:9

On Jviehe's idea: I think anything that reduces the campaign time to a reasonable period is a good idea. We need to reserve time for politicians to actually make policy instead of wasting time at campaigning.

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When WW2 had ended everyone joined the resistance.

""Playoffs?!.... Playoffs?! ...Don't talk about playoffs! Are you kidding me? Playoffs?!"

..

Kidding aside, I actually think that's a pretty good idea.

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Screw Change!! Let's have a Seamless Transition of Power and Policy.. John McSame in 2008!

Yeah, it'd incredibly difficult to pull off administratively; parties have enough trouble managing just one day's worth of primary voting.
It would also be unspeakably expensive.

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To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

One voter, one vote.

And the vote would actually count, remaining unadulterated by the Electoral College

I don't see how it could be more democratic...

The electoral college is perhaps one of the best components of our system that the founding fathers devised. This does insure that candidates campaign throughout the entire country and not concentrate their efforts in L.A., New York, Chicago, etc. Without this system the populated urban areas would be voting the president in. Personally I do not want the president lected by a small percentage of urban areas, and I do not think that most Americans would either, as most of the urban areas do not express the same concerns as more rural areas. This would become un-democratic in very short order. Do not forget that our government is a representative democracy. I would, however, possibly favor a limited campaign period to reduce the time on the road, etc., and force the politicians to do the work they were elected to do.

But it's not really the different to now. You often times have presidents winning the election with barely 40% of the vote. This is just a further extreme case of that.

I disagree. Whilst the election campaign is not centred in NY or CA, how many times do you see candidates hustling in Montana for their 3 votes? Elections are these days centred around Florida, Michigan and Ohio, so the electoral college has basically confirmed what it was set up to stop: the power of a small number of states to decide the election.

The USA is not a democracy - we are a republic. Bill Clinton was elected twice - he failed to garner more than 50% of the votes in either election.

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"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to
change it." -- Barack Obama

As did Bush in the 2000 election but he won the electoral college. IMO that is the most flawed part of the process.

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Any energy source that truly is cheaper and cleaner, yet still reliable, will not need government help to develop or sell. ~ Ron Paul