Reforming Americas undemocratic elections

A simple primary where all the qualified candidates from both parties are listed on a single ballot, each voter having one vote, and, if no one gets a majority, then a series of runoffs, dropping those who get less than certain (increasing) percentages of the votes until someone emerges with a majority.

It might be that voters also be allowed to cast a negative vote once they have cast an affirmative vote, so that seriously unpopular candidates, even if they have strong followings, would tend to not do well.

The gerrymandering and other devices incumbents use to create safe seats for themselves is, of course, morally bankrupt and contrary to the democracy these same politicians say the support so much.  Having independent institutions to draw the lines rather than the politicians themselves would be an improvement, but it would still be subject to politics.  Even having judges do it would have similar problems.  I think the best that could be done would be a set of rules saying that districts must have at least one point in them from which it is possible to draw a straight line to every other point in the district without crossing the territory of another district.

California, and, I think, Washington, now have primary votes for state officials, state legislature and Congressional seats much like what I described in my first paragraph.  It seems to be working to push politics to the center and thereby decrease the influence of demagogues and ideologues and other extremists.  It looks that California is getting much better governance, as a consequence, although time will tell.

Term limits are problematic, since "institutional memory" is valuable.  Still, the incumbent has such huge advantages (the ability to use the office to do favors, name recognition, prestige, corn, the ability to apply pressure to get donations to campaigns) that measures ought to be taken to balance the scales.  Term limits would be one of these, although not too short.  Limits on the time and nature of campaigns and the amounts of money that can be spent would also help, although there are serious free speech issues here.