Three improvements for elections in the United States

How to bust the duopoly that the Democratic and Republican parties have on our politics, and begin to return more control to the actual citizens:

Ranked Choice Voting

Also called “instant runoff”.

This is where you vote for several candidates, in order of your preference, ranking them 1, 2, 3 etc.

If any one candidate gets more than 50% of the voters’ first choice votes, they win, election over.

If no candidate wins that first round then the candidate with the fewest 1st choice votes is removed and the second choices from their voters are distributed to the remaining candidates, if someone gets over 50% they win, other wise repeat until someone has over 50%.

See: https://www.fairvote.org

Non-partisan Redistricting

Do not let the political parties draw their own maps to pick which voters can vote for them for each seat.

This is where the legislative district maps, mainly for the U.S. House of Representatives and for State-level governments, are drawn NOT by the Democrats and Republican parties but by a non-partisan commission. Arizona does this, also California. This reduces the chance that the districts are drawn to perpetuate the power of one or both Parties.

See: https://www.nonprofitvote.org/nonpartisan-redistricting-citizens-not-incumbents-charge/ 

Open Primaries

This is where all voters may choose from the list of all candidates during a primary, instead of only allowing Democrats to vote for Democrats and Republicans to vote for Republicans. The parties can still choose their internal offices however they wish, but people running for public office get chosen by the whole body of voters.

Several States have open primaries for at least some of their elections, for example Alabama, Georgia,Vermont are among the States that have open primaries for Presidential elections, and Arizona has open primaries for all elections except for Presidential elections.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_primaries_in_the_United_States