[zeek]

Originally Posted by OBW

Heard a podcast yesterday that had ideas for improving the election outcomes.

Debates with no one in the room so that audience applause or boos do not affect the TV audience more than the things said.

Possibly requiring that everyone who can vote be required to show up at the polls even if they don't want to vote. (Australia actually does this.)

A lot of others.

One of the things that was pointed to as the most problematic in the U.S. is that the focus during campaigns is so much on what are truly marginal but hot-button issues and the result has been the polarization of the parties. The vast middle-ground is not even thought about. They have many normal issues that are worthy of discussion, but since there is no evidence that they are even listened to, and they are not necessarily in sync with the extremes (in terms of the hot-button issues), they just stay home. And we get gridlock in a way that hasn't been seen since the late 1800s.

The bipolar party system has split in such a way that there is little middle ground. This is the system that gave us Clinton and Trump as the only realistic options for POTUS in 2016. That fact alone should be enough to warrant radical rethinking and reform of the system.