Forum Post: Don't vote for anyone you do not know personally.

I would like to offer a proposal for electoral reform of my own that I think would solve most of the problems of our current system. My proposal is an extension of the idea of the electoral college to all elected offices, not just the President. The idea of the electoral college was that no one (except perhaps George Washington at that time) would be well known enough to the entire nation to allow for an informed decision by its dispersed citizenry, so local presidential electors would be chosen by their local constituencies to assemble and deliberate as to who was best qualified to lead the country. This original concept has been corrupted in our time by the (overwhelmingly) two party system. Who nowadays even knows who the electors they are voting for are? Their names are not even on the ballot. Indeed I would suggest that the largest population group where you could get to know your potential representative on a face to face handshaking level would be about 300 people. Out of 300 people there are likely to be 10 who are interested and informed enough to make reasonable decisions about what the government should do and how it should do it. They can easily canvass the rest of us, offering their ideas and answering our questions and listening to our concerns. And seeking our votes. We the people, for the most part, have no desire to be involved in the nitty gritty of political policy. We only want to feel that we are being represented by someone who, in our best judgement, is honest and capable and has our best interests in heart, someone who we can know as a neighbor. So what I suggest is that we divide up the population into one million voting precincts of 300 people each to choose electors for all the local, state, and federal elected offices. Election of electors would be the only elections by a private ballot. The number of votes cast in each precinct would be small enough to make voting fraud impossible. The electors chosen would elect by public vote all the elected positions in their local utility districts, school districts, cities, counties and other local districts in which they reside. The same electors could also elect state and federal representatives, or choose from amongst themselves a representative fraction to do so. The electors would be chosen a year before each election to give them time to research their choices. This would seem to me to eliminate many of the problems with our present system: voter fraud, unrestrained campaign contributions, TV sound bites, mudslinging, etc. Political campaigning as we know it would cease to exist and be replaced by something more like town hall meetings of the past. Voter registration and turnout would probably increase. The whole system would be more orderly and less full of hot air and hate speech. Instant runoff and other methods of insuring that you get a representative 10 electors for 300 citizens would be easier to design. I would be interested in hearing what those interested in electoral reform think of this idea. I have never seen it proposed before. I welcome your comments.