The Electoral College: Arguments

[Verily]

IRV would be ideal, I think, as the President is chosen through a single-winner election. (Condorcet is simply too complicated to be feasible.)

All candidates filed with the FEC should be allowed on the ballot, but not all candidates must be marked in order on the ballot, allowing the exhaustion of ballots. I see no reason for the federal government not to be the ones printing the ballots, as clearly nationwide standardization is much less likely to results in "biased" ballots. Still, counts would be carried out at the local level.

[Verily]

Could you imagine how big the ballot would be just being on the popular vote?

I don't see why it would be particularly larger than the current ballot in states with larger than average ballots. It isn't as if the popular vote suddenly makes it possible for minor independents or parties to win the Presidency.

[Verily]

Could you imagine how big the ballot would be just being on the popular vote?

I don't see why it would be particularly larger than the current ballot in states with larger than average ballots. It isn't as if the popular vote suddenly makes it possible for minor independents or parties to win the Presidency.

Remember that it was because Florida made it so easy for presidential candidates to qualify that they had to use all the weird ballot formats that confused people.  If you also had to support ranking, it could be a pretty long ballot.

New Jersey had more candidates on the ballot than any other state in 2004 (9), and it was not a long ballot. Florida had only one more candidate than that in 2000 (10); a ten-candidate ballot is not a long one, it's routine here, and there was no excuse for the poor ballot design.

[Verily]

Nice, but why not just establish the popular vote?