Federal management of federal elections would be a big step forward really; would mean that you'd not have individual states playing games with the rules in order to empower their party over the other one.
Since that'd require amending the constitution anyway it'd make sense to do it alongwith a wider package of other electoral reforms: moving towards preferential voting for the Presidency (and abolishing the electoral college as well); a requirement for fair redistricting (which would also include state level elections as well; although the actual management would be at state level) although I'd rather see a move towards some system of PR: there are a bunch of options (the German-style system; STV; maybe even open list PR with relatively small districts (no more than 10) combined with some kind of federal compensatory seats to ensure proportionality - all of those would probably require expanding the House to ensure decent representation for the smaller states without harming proportionality). I'd also go towards slightly longer terms for the House (two years is way too short and basically means that representatives have to spend more time campaigning than governing: maybe four years?) although quite how that affects the Senate I don't know since off-year elections with just Senators up would be very low turnout.
A district-based EC would basically give you all of the disadvantages of a parliamentary system with none of the advantages; it'd make it even more likely that the person with the most votes doesn't win which isn't how a Presidential election should work...
I like this. I think the House should change to STV and the Senate should change to a more proportional system that has STV-like elements. House seats can be up for election every 4 years, while Senators would get 8 year terms and be divided into 2 classes that swap elections every 4 year cycle.
Rather than expanding the house, however, I'd have house districts be created by a federal agency and ignore state boundaries. A superdistrict that sends 5 people to the House might encompass all of NH, Maine, and Vermont, for instance, while a 3-winner superdistrict might encompass Montana and the Dakotas. Alaska and Hawaii would be problematic, though. (also, since these boundaries would ignore state lines, DC would be part of a superdistrict that would include Maryland and/or Virginia and so get a voting representative at long last)
