How to fix the USA

I told someone, recently, that if I had $10,000,000,000,000 that I could fix Canada.

See, many of Canada's problems are structural. Even our "worst of the worst" is not so bad; the Bloc Quebecois, after winning the official opposition in 1993, decided NOT to screw up Parliament. They easily could have. The structure of our parliament would have allowed them to ruin the way things work if they had chosen to do so. But. The people who filled those seats, the things plugged in to that structure, were, in this case, "good". Good in that they decided to not disrupt Parliament.

When dealing with structural problems, you can fairly easily find ways to fix things.

The US problems are not structural. The structure of the US itself is not broken. What is broken is the filling. The people in those seats. In particular, since 1994, under the guidance of Newt Gingrich, the Republican Party has taken an active decision to purposefully use that structure to obstruct the system. This is something that is done frequently in other countries on various issues, but in the US, it seems to be damaging the country as a whole.

On a state level, these problems are not as severe. The parties are willing to work with one another, and the parties are willing to do what works. Utah, a state full of Republicans, gives free houses to homeless people. California, a state dominated by Democrats, has been purposefully structured to give Republicans a say in the budget and tax increases. Federally, however, the entire system is designed on purpose to make change difficult, and changing that, would only make things worse.

So, at the time, my answer to the question was "I can't fix the USA"

But

I can.

The Electoral College is equal to the number of House Representatives and Senators

Remove "equal to the number of" and replace it with "the members of", and

The Electoral College is the members of House Representatives and Senators

In particular, the newly elected congress.

This means if you want a Democratic President you need to vote for a Democratic Congressman.

This would not work in the individual states as changing the structure in a state is easier, and making it easier to change the Federal structure would cause the system to change too radically.


Given that the new Congress needs to elect the new President, they will officially do the election early in January. Given that the new President already won the primaries, and we know who it will be by who wins a majority in Congress, we can still have the Presidential inauguration in late January.

This could mean a Presidential Election every 2 years. I'd also consider changing Congressional elections to take place every year, but for now, the simple answer is


Fixing the USA:
Electoral College = Congress