We could continue the current system, but with one modification.
My proposal works like this: Every four years, we vote as usual, and whoever wins the electoral college vote wins, as usual. And a President can serve up to two terms this way.
But if a President wants to serve additional terms after that, they have to win both the electoral college vote AND the popular vote. Then they can serve as many terms as they want, potentially.
Of course, elections have to be secure. Voter ID must be used in all counties in all states, we have to use paper ballots (computers are optional), and there needs to be omni-partisan ballot challengers for verification.
This falls under the category of election security, but it’s important to mention to prevent abuse. The President of the US is the most powerful person in the world after all.
Is it absolutely necessary to increase the difficulty, by requiring them to win both the electoral and popular votes? Perhaps not, but the increased difficulty might make it more agreeable.
I’m opposed to incorporating any kind of popular vote to select the president.
One of the problems people usually don’t consider is the issues with establishing trust between states. A national popular vote in any official capacity would require standardization at the federal level. It can’t work otherwise, because there are all sorts of things states (or rather the dominant party of each state) can do to give themselves an advantage, abusing the full faith and credit clause.
As an example: My home state of Utah could adopt Demeny voting, or lower the voting age, to inflate our legal voting population in favor of the Republican candidate. Regardless what you think of these types of policies, this is something other states might consider unfair, because they don’t have the same system. So what we’d eventually see is the right of suffrage expanded on an uneven and strategic basis.
One of the benefits of the electoral college is problems with the presidential election are contained and addressed at the state level. If we ran a national election, and the result was very close, there would be a nation-wide recounting process; very inefficient, and very prone to sow division. With the electoral college, only a few states might have to recount.
I don’t think they can lower the voting age for a federal election, could they?
And I’m not really sure what Demeny voting is.
And what is wrong with federal standardization on a federal election?
Too much standardization could be a problem, since each state should have the right to run its own elections, but as long as the standards are minimal (18 years and up, no felons, voter ID, etc…), then it should be fine, I would think.
The popular vote isn’t necessarily required, I just thought that by adding that extra layer of difficulty, people wouldn’t be able to dispute it.
Perhaps alternately, in order to win 3 terms or greater, they would be required to win OVER 270 electoral college votes.