How come that we have a federal government with separation of powers into three branches yet we have an electoral system that effectively only allows two constant political parties? Does that make any sense to you? Why should we peg ourselves between just two choices that fester upon us a two-party political machine that now works to manipulate us in a constant direction away from constitutional governance into a duopolistic tyranny? Notice that a two-party system is just one convenient notch above a one-party system.

A two-party system pits one large general common-denominator against another, but as it runs course it can result to an effective one-party rule. This will likely occur over time when the parties get more centralized and nationalized and the people have lost their resolve. We sketch a possible scenario of symptoms and stages for this evolution. Conceive where a two-party system at first has some regional variances and the people are still able to get the parties to meet in the middle on some issues, govern farther apart on others and address the various nuances. Politicians and the powers who want more control will tend to concentrate in one of the parties. They influence society through social programs or having people dumbed down via state education, thus dividing and conquering the people. While this is always a threat, the two-party system more intensely reflects or invokes a polarization of the populace as either party can overreach. In reaction, the electorate shifts from one party to the other in a vain attempt to settle to more ideal middle positions.

After a while when the populace has been subjected to a few pendulum swings that are strong enough to further relocate the political center, one of the two main political parties may weaken position fearing that they will lose their power held so long in a mostly term-limitless or party-machine government. That party functions as a weaker, vacillating party that offers themselves as a more "reasoned" or merely diluted version of the stronger party. Their candidates may campaign or govern in a more contradictory fashion in order to hold on to their old constituents while simultaneously appealing to the new dynamics of the relocated center. As the system deteriorates, it gets to a point where the weakened party's candidates govern more and more towards the opposing party's positions yet still get re-elected because they know their trapped constituents have no other real option. Those constituents would never vote for the stronger party's candidates and the independent or third-party candidates are relegated to mere spoilers in the two-party system. In the weaker party's primaries or in either party's primaries at any of these stages, the machine's powers-that-be allow or provide enough truly appealing candidates on the ballot in order to divvy the more organic vote's potential lead, thus herding a large enough bloc that gets their favored machine candidate in. All of this smacks of the manipulations of the elite and established political class forces running the two-party machine.

Have you had enough of being played as puppets to this game? It's time for our nation to have a more open election system. One that allows for more than just two parties and works to reflect the true desires of the people. Some will resist this change because they claim the two-party system truly satisfies the more prevalent direction at the polls where the multi-party systems abroad result in constant squabbling and factionalism. Yes, in a number of cases abroad there may be little effective governance or representation despite having cast a substantial portion of the vote where some of their election systems vote for a party as opposed to a candidate. Nevertheless back home, independents and third parties may end up electing the greater evil by serving as spoilers when they weaken the more popular disposition by taking votes from the more generally agreeable of the two-main parties in a particular election. This is not to mention the group-think of voting for the "most electable" over the most favored. The answer to all this is not to stick with the dysfunctions of these systems in order to settle for their supposed pros over their cons, but to instead adjust or replace these electoral systems so that their new properties address the aforementioned concerns. One such option being considered abroad is to incorporate a half-and-half seat allocation by parties/candidates. At home in the U.S. we have advocated range or score vote elections along with other reforms like our proposal to enhance the electoral college.

What is likeable about range or score voting is that it allows all voters to express their opinion about all the candidates by rating them on a scale that indicates greatest favorableness down to greatest opposition with the default position being: 'No opinion' or 'Do not know' for each candidate when there is no other indication. This type of voting protects against the spoiler effect of third-party candidates occurring in our usually two-party system since voters can highly rate their most electable and their more ideal candidates the same or closer while still indicating their strong opposition to the remaining candidates of other party(s). This means that both their more electable and most ideal candidates are going to be competitive against the other party(s). No longer must they lose votes from the most agreeable candidate of the two-main parties towards their ideal candidate which causes a greater evil of the two main parties to win nor will they have to be stuck with the lesser evil of the two main parties as the only option. Obviously because of this, there will no longer be an incentive to keep a system of races geared to just two main parties and their machines.

Range or score voting is also better for the polls taken by the media and pollsters before an election. One would have a much better idea how each candidate is doing with all of the voters beforehand as opposed to just knowing the leaning shares a candidate has of the electorate which can be an incomplete or dubious indicator. In this current paradigm, one candidate may have a larger leaning of the electorate due to pressures of electability yet other candidates with smaller leanings have as much or more appeal. This is how our mere majority-plurality system lacks indicative depth and pigeon-holes the electorate.

Range or score voting is handy for us in another area. Our more developed versions of our proposal to enhance the electoral college (Bicam II, Bicam III) grant a nearly equivalent congressionally-powered share of electors to each state which differs from the current system's nominal electoral share and make use of the range vote's structure in an embedded process. Some of the resulting allocated electors to the states would be fractional and because in the end divvying up the real flesh-and-blood electors accordingly to these state shares and to each candidate's electoral tally would be a bloody mess -- post the election results the embedded process swaps and combines nationwide in virtuality all the named presidential elector assignments in order to derive the highest possible number of whole, homogeneous electors and the fewest number of remaining whole electors holding partial presidential assignments. For those fewest whole electors holding partial assignments to presidential candidates, the range vote's structure is used to mimic what a brain of each of those virtual whole electors would think, feel and opinion according to its own held favoring proportions as directed by its associated partial presidential assignments (or by the grouping of such electors by subset) and settles accordingly on one best candidate. In the end an actual flesh-and-blood elector (possibly possessing near the same favorings by survey) who will vote for that one same candidate in the real world is recruited. The states will fulfill their nominal number of electors as distributed in the current system in such a way that the electoral college when viewed as a whole holds the final presidential assignments as directed under the bicameral electoral college method but without any actual elector recruits having to suffer dismemberment.

As well as the numerical methods our bicameral electoral college proposal entails, it also provides changes in representational dynamics. We call it bicameral because it takes the electoral college allocations as a whole and splits them in half by the popular vote and the other half by state legislatures. This will enhance the check and balance of selecting presidents since the proposed planks of a president will be weighed by the legislatures of the states who will want to resist becoming irrelevant in light of federal powers and populist fervors. How states are legislatively governed will be compared to how a presidential candidate proposes to govern the country and any agreement or contradictions in principle will be more duly checked by states and their populaces.

The presidential assignment of electors for each state would no longer be unanimous but in proportions, reflected by each state's popular and legislative tallies for the candidates. This will be an advantage because no longer can a presidential candidate take a whole slew of states for granted where the common denominator within each happens to support that candidate. Presidents will have to campaign and govern the country more as a working whole. They can no longer rely on a bloc of states and campaign at the latter stages focusing only on a handful of swing states. Instead for the whole campaign and for governance thereafter, they must take all the various demographics across the country and within each state into consideration.

Further, unanimous state blocs are deprecated as there is not much need for such to make states more competitive or for them to get noticed in relation to others -- the more congressionally-powered share of electors for each state will do that plus the shared input from their state legislatures in choice of electors will help address those needs. Inhabitants of each state will reside under a more competitive or varied voice towards presidential prospects and subsequent governance. No longer must state citizens outside a unanimous elector bloc be totally forsaken.

The most advanced version of the bicameral electoral college (Bicam III) subdivides both the popular and legislative vote towards presidential electors in each state into two quadrants. Each of those two quadrants make up half of a particular state's electoral shares in Bicam III. The two quadrants of the legislative vote are determined by the state house and state senate respectively with each of their members having an individual proportional share as determined by the number of members in their chamber. The two quadrants of the popular vote are respectively determined by the statewide popular vote and the presidential vote by districts. Those districts may be unique or they may outline with other constituent-level districts but generally no larger in population than congressional districts or encompassing anything beyond one congressional district when based on same.

Let's begin to push for these electoral reforms: term limits, range vote & bicameral electoral college. Improving the presidential (and other) debates would fit in as well such as ending total reliance on the media's questions and instead involving state legislators, more think-tank associates, independent and third-party proponents plus some legal, natural born citizens. The earlier debate tiers should also be altered from the effectively: 'Unwatched second tier' & 'Totally hyped, must-watch first tier' to two half-and-half mixes. Each mix would consist of one-half the first tier and one-half the second tier. Have those two separate debates, say on Tuesday first week and Thursday second week. This would give a more competitive chance to all candidates allowing underdogs a better opportunity to differentiate themselves and make their case to all audiences. It would also help to alleviate certain psychological biases if some debates occurred only on radio or some other audio format and some via the printed word or transcribed - all in combination with the televised or video formats.

America really needs to get out of the two-party rut and the range vote along with other electoral reforms will work greatly towards this. All this will yield a much more pleasing result in our elections.

Should there be concern that in use of proportioned share, multi-party systems that over the incarnations of the electoral college where it happens that none of the presidential candidates get assigned a majority of the electors and despite the consequences those electors would not adequately or consistently vote a majority candidate victor; we accordingly incorporate the following dichotomy to satisfy prevention against the House of Representatives picking a president an inordinate number of times:

This approach will require another amendment to the Constitution which is based on Amendment XII and a part of the Article II concept it deprecated. Such an amendment is an item to consider in the proposal for a convention of states via Article V which is basically a suring-up, continuity convention for the Constitution along original intent or within canon that we endorse in these constitutionally-incorrect times.

Now for those who want to push for range or score type polls concerning the remaining two-party candidates, we have included the following set of sample range polls. One is for the Republican candidates and the other Democrat. We included some of the earlier Democrat candidates and one of their proposed candidates in order to make both sets the same size as the current number of Republican candidates at time of this posting. Following the sets are the email addresses of some pollsters that you can send a click-highlight-and-copy of this paragraph and the range poll sets to as a request that they begin utilizing range polls. Note that you can actually play with the working buttons of the poll sets here at the originating web page* and perhaps same occurs for particular email recipients of the click-highlight-and-copy content here suggested. We encourage the pollster recipients to use the embedded HTML code of the sets on their own servers in order to begin gathering such range poll data from the public.