Task Force: Design a New Election System

Congratulations!

You have been chosen to participate in a program allowing U.S. citizens to redesign the election system. Each participant will have the opportunity to present their plan and ideas to a group of people who will vote for their favorite design. Your goal is to reform the election process and improve components of it that have been criticized.

Why Are We Doing This?:

One of the biggest components of the election process in the United States, the electoral college, has received a lot of criticism in the past few years. Arguably, some parts of the system may be flawed or outdated. Some critics have proposed a ranked-choice voting system in which voters would rate candidates from highest preference to lowest. Here, we ask you to try and design an ideal election system for our nation that might solve some of the various problems associated with it. 

 Steps:

1. After researching and discussing how the current election system works in the United States, try to redesign it by analyzing some aspects of it that seem reformable. 
   1. What are some qualities of the election system? 
   2. Which of those qualities do you want to change? 
   3. Will you keep or remove the electoral college? Why or why not?
   4. Will you change how many delegates each state gets?
   5. Will you adopt a ranked-choice system?
   6. How will you deal with election-related issues such as gerrymandering (manipulating boundaries of a region to favor one party or class)? What other issues are associated with the election system that you can think of?
2. Think through the possible objections about your design that someone could have and how you would answer them. What qualities have you changed that someone might be opposed to? How do you plan to justify your decisions?
3. Share with the group and see if you can convince them that your redesign of the nation’s election system best considers the problems associated with it.

Things To Keep In Mind:

• You do not have to brainstorm a way to completely transform the election process. Think of a few ideas that you feel confident about defending.
• You don’t have to worry about answering all possible objections, but you should have some defense of why you think your reforms are important.
• Your reforms should be things that the government could realistically implement.