My idea for election reform

[Ghost in the Machine]

I'll keep it short and sweet here. What do you think of this idea?

Instead of each Presidential Candidate choosing a running mate, we simply run the primaries, we get our candidate and the repugs get theirs.

Now we run the national elections with just the top 2, let's just say Ghouliani against Edwards or Romney against Clinton, whoever won the Dem and repug primaries. The Country votes. The winner is now President and the loser(?) is Vice President.

Wouldn't that be a great help with oversight and bipartisanship? MAKE the parties have to work together to run our Country for the GOOD of the Country and the good of the people that elected them.

[Vincardog]

1. FUCK THAT. WE do not need to cooperate with the REpigLICKINS

Why don't people quit calling for cooperation with the FASCIST THUGS?

[Ghost in the Machine]

2. How is this cooperating with fascist thugs? How is this going to affect

the current misadministration?? IT'S NOT. This in the future. That's why we have 2 years left to expose EVERYONE who has enabled, aided and encouraged this theft of our Democracy and get rid of them in the next election.

Wouldn't it also mean that they would have to cooperate with us? I understand what you mean about cooperating with THIS administration, but we NNED cooperation in the future.

[Vincardog]

3. We get cooperation on true progressive issues by standing for those issues and

having TRANSPARENT verifiable elections. I do not want to President GORE and vp McCain.

[LiberalFighter]

5. So we get another Cheney as VP deciding he is not part of the Executive Branch

[LiberalFighter]

4. It's already been done and Amendment XII changed it

Original constitution had 2nd highest voter become VP

There were problems with the original amendment.

[liberalpragmatist]

6. That's how it was originally

That’s roughly how the system was originally designed. Prior to the 12th Amendment, when the Electoral College assembled, electors would cast votes for president – only one vote per candidate was allowed and they could only vote for one candidate from their state. The votes would be tallied and the candidate with support from the largest majority of electors would be elected president; the next-highest scoring would become Vice President. That’s why Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party became Vice President to John Adams of the Federalist Party.

However, the election of 1800 threw the flaws of the system into relief. The framers had not anticipated political parties and when they emerged they tried to nominate candidates for both the presidency and vice presidency. But there was no way for electors to distinguish votes between them, so the potential was there for the vice presidential nominee to be elected president. Electors would try to engineer results such that the vice presidential nominee would get one less vote than the presidential nominee.

For reasons that I’m not clear on, the Democratic-Republican electors messed up in 1800 and wound up causing a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr (the VP candidate). The election was sent to the House because nobody had a majority and it took ballot after ballot for Jefferson to finally get elected because (a) Burr decided to keep his name in consideration and (b) the Federalists, who controlled the House, preferred Burr to Jefferson.

Afterwards, the constitution was amended to separate votes for President and Vice President and that’s how things stand today.

Anyway, I’m not really a fan of your idea – how exactly would it encourage bipartisanship? It’d be much more likely to result in an elected but powerless Vice President using his position as a bully pulpit to continue a campaign against the sitting President. For example, if Clinton had a Republican as his Veep, it’s very likely that that Republican would simply never end his campaign and be the highest-ranking opposition leader to the President.

Now, maybe there’s some value in that – it could become like a British-parliament style “Shadow President” but that’s not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about encouraging bipartisanship. I see no way that electing them separately would do that.