It's pretty remarkable though that almost half of the US voted for someone who is clearly unsuitable to be president based on his first term.
It might be time to consider letting go of the democratic ideal that every person's vote has the same weight, and figure out some criteria for either voting eligibity or vote weight that would mostly exclude or give little weight to the votes of people who voted for a clearly unsuitable candidate.
That's the way it was originally, when only people who owned land could vote (not the men-only part). It was a basic test of responsibility, similar to the 501-karma downvote requirement on HN. Holding land wasn't that hard, but it did indicate a baseline.
Unless you're thinking of only allowing certain political or moral viewpoints to vote? That sounds fairly dystopian, no matter what one believes.
Edit: we used to have something else like that - a certain subset of the population only got 3/5 of a whole vote. But I really doubt that's what you want.
The simplest would be to weight one's vote by some non-decreasing function of the number of people who live in the same conurbation.
That would partially achieve the outcome and also makes sense, because if someone wants to live in isolation, then they probably don't care and aren't affected very much by society's policies, and they don't have enough social experience to be correctly informed.
> if someone wants to live in isolation, then they probably don't care and aren't affected very much by society's policies
Or they care too much, or society has driven them away, or they just don't like the population density, or it's cheaper, or they like the countryside better. See: the increasing number of people moving to the country and the popularity of Musk's Starlink project, indicating that remote people are invested in society.
I think that making the assumption that the people who live closer together have a better handle on how to run the country (society != country) needs a lot of justification. The large fraction of the population that lives less densely should not be disregarded as somehow 'less valuable'.
As I referenced above, the last time we tried to weight the value of different people it didn't turn out to be such a great idea. Skin color (the 3/5ths compromise, if you didn't get the reference) or geographic location, the value of a person or their vote shouldn't be tampered with.
True. My memory confused population census tallies with voting rights. Still, measured worth of a person is fairly proportional to weight of their vote. Limit either, and you limit both.
If people vote for a candidate and the candidate meets the eligibility requirements in the constitution, he/she is suitable. That’s it.
If you want to change the constitution to say that only Democrats can be elected president (this election ended up falling right down party lines again), I think you’re gonna have a hard time getting that through Congress.
Maybe move to a system instead where some people's vote have any weight instead, rather than abolishing democracy.
The EC means people's vote not only get put down the drain, but also they get to vote for candidates nominated with knowledge of this (swing states might not vote for a candidate popular everywhere else)
It might be time to consider letting go of the democratic ideal that every person's vote has the same weight, and figure out some criteria for either voting eligibity or vote weight that would mostly exclude or give little weight to the votes of people who voted for a clearly unsuitable candidate.