Drops Down the Drain

Yes, I know there are those who believe you can't vote yourself to freedom.  They have a valid argument.  Democracy is already akin to two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, and the fact that we haven't ever been able to trust the outcome of elections doesn't help.  

However, let me posit a few simple ideas (I just came up with in the shower) that are probably just a drop in the bucket to 'fixing' what ails the electoral system:

Everyone talks about 'term limits'.  Most know that all limiting a person's term in office will do is strengthen the political party of that office holder.  The party picks the temporary replacement, possibly a party hack, possibly a future replacement, which gives the party the upper hand over the elected.

Term limits for party would be better.  No one affiliated with the previous office holder or party of said official would be capable of serving in any capacity of any campaign or administration ever again.  You get your however-many-terms and done.  That'd do away with a good bit of the barnacles of corruption building up sludge in government.

Yeah, I know, they'd just go even farther behind closed doors with their corruption.  Just getting this ridiculous good guy gang vs. bad guy gang nonsense out of the electoral process might force people to make a more informed decision, though.

Next, increase the freaking representation.  Budgets continue to go up, spending goes up, amount of currency goes up, causing inflation, yet the number of people allowed to represent us never goes up.  In fact, on the national level, it was legally frozen by Congress.  Why?  A cynical person might say it's because the fewer people you represent, the more likely you are to accurately represent them and not outside interests.  I guess I'm cynical.  Anyone who's not is blind.

Finally, in my bathing brainstorm session, I came up with better ballots.  There's no reason we can't have a paper ballot with a small piece you can remove with the unique number for your ballot.  That way, when they're tallied up by a computer, there's no doubt how you voted by comparing the votes cast on the ballot matching your number.  The biggest complaint with our elections for the last few decades has been a lack of trust in how votes are tallied.  Government has done very little to dissuade this complaint.  Why would they, right?

Yeah, as I said, nothing's going to help.  The deluded will continue to convince themselves they're right.  None of the ideas listed here are new, anyway.  Even the first President of the US of A tried to give us a warning about political parties.  Nobody listened to him, either.