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I agree with your overall point that we need to revitalize our voting system. The Center for Election Science has made a convincing argument for approval voting

• geofft 6y ago
  Yup. Another thing about our current system that I only realized after talking with folks who do politics for a living about what they do: the fact that elections are close to 50/50 isn't a sign of a deep and fundamental divide in our country, it's that it's financially not worth getting much past 50/50. If you are currently at 48%, it's worth changing your platform a bit to get 51% of the population; if you're at 51%, it's not worth changing your platform to get 55%. More directly, if you're polling well in 40% of districts, poorly in 40% of districts, and competitively in the rest, it's worth focusing your attention only on the competitive districts, until you get to 50%. It's not worth paying any attention to the ones you're not competitive in. Other voting methods (approval or ranked-choice) will reduce this effect and make political parties more representative of what people actually believe, instead of designing the system such that we have two parties that do the worst possible job of each representing 50% of the people.