Ask Americans what they think of the Electoral College and you’ll hear a wide range of opinions, from “I don’t know” to “How did you get this number?” Press them for specifics and some will get downright angry!
Clearly, the Electoral College is a hot topic. Plenty of voters, tired of its archaic, winner-take-all structure, seem ready to abandon it altogether. But what then? How would we choose a President? Here are a few suggestions.
Ranked Choice
In ranked-choice voting, citizens vote for multiple candidates: a first choice, second choice, and so on. If no candidate receives more than half the votes, the least-popular candidate is removed and the remaining contenders are locked in a windowless room to determine “who wants it most.” The least-popular candidate apologizes for wasting everyone’s time and calls an Uber.
Ranked Choice Plus™
This is the same as ranked-choice voting, except viewers can watch a live stream of inside the windowless room, for $19.95.
Tug-of-War
Democrats gather in the Pacific Northwest, Republicans in the Southeast. Each group grasps one end of a twenty-five-hundred-mile-long rope and, on Wolf Blitzer’s count of three, pulls with all its might. A bandanna is tied to the middle of the rope; the first side to move that bandanna out of Kansas wins the Presidency and is entitled to let go of the rope suddenly, causing the other group to fall backward in a humiliating way. (Third-party voters can watch the action in person or from the comfort of their homes.)
Quiz Show
Each candidate gets to choose three of their sharpest, most prominent supporters to face off in an hours-long battle of wits, moderated by Steve Harvey.
For instance, a 2020 version might have featured Trump enthusiasts Scott Baio, Kirstie Alley, and Stephen Baldwin squaring off against Biden backers Jon Stewart and Michelle Obama and also M. Stanley Whittingham, a winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the director of both Binghamton University’s chemistry department and the NorthEast Center for Chemical Energy Storage, a research center funded by the U.S. Energy Department. Categories would include such topics as “Civics 101,” “American History,” and “Chemistry.”
The winning team’s candidate becomes President; runners-up go home with a solid-oak bedroom set.
Lumberjack Competition
I’m not sure how exactly this would work as far as electing a President is concerned, but, man, wouldn’t it be fun to watch? Chop, chop! Saw, saw!
Lottery
Every four years, residents of a small town in America’s heartland prepare slips of paper, placing a black dot on all but one of them. On Election Day, the candidates join the townsfolk for a public drawing. One by one, they are called to take a slip from a box. The candidate who chooses the blank slip wins the Presidency; all others get stoned, which is cool, because the town in question decriminalized recreational marijuana use in a previous election.
Steel-Cage Death Match
This one is self-explanatory, and elegant in its simplicity. But are Americans really ready to go there? Oh, my God, yes. No question. Should we? Perhaps not. Let’s move on.
Goldberg
On Election Day, voters across the nation cast their “ballots” in the form of red or blue marbles. Rules vary by state, but these marbles may be mailed to local election offices or taken in person to certified drop-off funnels, which deposit them onto wire tracks. These tracks take the marbles on a whimsical roller coaster of a journey to the state election office, where they fall from a chute in the ceiling onto a large scale. Eventually, the scale sinks low enough to depress a switch, which starts a fan, which blows a toy sailboat across a kiddie pool, at the far side of which is an inflated balloon. A needle affixed to the bow of the boat pops the balloon, startling a nearby elector, who races across the room and pulls a blue or red lever, recording a vote for either the Democratic candidate or the Republican one.
Also, somewhere in there, the marble triggers a series of mechanical arms that light a gas burner under a skillet and crack and fry an egg—a treat for the elector!
Popular Vote
Each voter casts a ballot for his or her preferred candidate. In the end, the votes are counted and the candidate with the most votes wins.
On second thought, forget this one. It’ll never fly.
