Fix flawed election system to revive our democracy

Is there a quick fix for repairing the flaws in our American democracy? Beyond the structural problems of media ownership and the climate in which public opinion is shaped, a macro view of our political system reveals an inherent flaw:

American elections don't rest on the core principle of "one person, one vote." Rather, we have a maze of primary hurdles, leading to a national general election weighted to small-state dominance.

Oddly, just when we need to fix the system more than ever, calls for reforming the Electoral College have grown silent. George W. Bush won 10 more states than Al Gore in 2000, each with two bonus votes for their members of the U.S. Senate, providing his margin of victory of five electoral votes, despite losing the popular vote.

Rather than despairing over the prospect of constitutional reform, voters should pressure their elected representatives at the federal level to correct four glaring problems with the way we conduct elections in the United States.

• Fix the presidential primaries. I can't find the passage in the U.S. Constitution declaring that Iowa and New Hampshire should have a disproportionate influence on which candidates emerge to contend for the White House, yet we all seem to accept this as a given.

Efforts this year by Florida and Michigan to jump ahead of New Hampshire were met with legislation from the early primary states that would set their dates to always be first. Florida and Michigan have a point. Their voters represent broad interests of our country — retirees, auto workers, Latinos and other minorities — who are disproportionately shut out of the caucus system in Iowa and the party primaries in New Hampshire, simply because those groups don't have significant populations in those states.

With all the maneuvering for the pole position, why not create five regional primaries that allow the candidates to address issues specific to each part of the country, but don't per-versely end up favoring a particular state or interest group?

• Fix the Electoral College. I know the argument: The very states that are favored by this system have the votes to deny the two-thirds majority in Congress or three-quarters majority in state voting required to amend the Constitution.

Yet, I fail to see why Californians should have votes worth a fraction less than those of voters in Wyoming. Further, the political calculus required in 1789 to entice small states to join the Union no longer applies. Does anyone seriously suggest that Alaska would be underrepresented in presidential voting if it merely had the one electoral vote commensurate with its population? The antics of Sen. Ted Stevens funding a "bridge to nowhere" only underscore Alaska's disproportionate influence in at least one branch of our government.

• Fix the scramble for money. Pundits increasingly are concluding that Hillary Clinton has the Democratic nomination sewn up, mainly on the basis of her fundraising prowess.

The primary contests should be our national seedbed for generating new ideas and fresh faces, rather than confirming the politics of past elections. Yet, our money-driven system celebrates candidates with established fundraising networks who can jump to the front of the pack by hitting up contributors for $4,600 donations, with half designated for the general election.

It may be naive to think we can take the money out of politics and hold elections like those in Western Europe that don't require marathon fundraising tours of the country, but the alternative is to continue to favor candidates with fundraising skills over candidates with other qualities. Would Abraham Lincoln have ever sustained the energy — or interest — to tromp around the country, hat in hand, in order to qualify himself as a worthy occupant of the White House?

• Hold old-fashioned debates. In the 1948 Oregon primary, Republican contenders Thomas Dewey and Harold Stassen debated the single issue of outlawing the Communist Party of the U.S.A. Rather than today's joint-appearance debates, which are really only mini-news-conferences, NPR and public television should broadcast genuine debates that frame specific issues for the voters — for example, whether a specific deadline should be set for withdrawal from Iraq or whether a flat tax should be adopted.

This would allow voters to see whether candidates have a grasp of complex policies as opposed to a flair for sound bites.

To deal with the plethora of candidates, debates might be shortened and formatted into a "playoff" system with Internet polling. And, in these days of interleague play, wouldn't it be enlightening to have interparty matchups of purported front-runners, such as Hillary Clinton vs. Rudy Giuliani, in order to help determine each party's choice of general-election flag bearer?

These ideas have been around for some time in various versions, but they refuse to die because they are good policy ideas, which, when adopted one day, will restore and revive our democracy.

Alex Alben, a high-tech executive based in Seattle, writes regularly on technology, media and politics for The Seattle Times. E-mail him at: alexalben99@yahoo.com