1) I suppose it doesn't bother you that if your state votes for a different candidate then your vote is now deemed worthless.  Take example me: if I vote for anyone that isn't republican for the Presidential election in Texas then my vote is worthless.  Sure the electoral college keeps the politicians campaigning in most states but I have a big issue with the entire Presidential election to begin with.  There should be a limit on the money spent.  It is sad that countless millions are wasted on ads, etc..  when the candidates should be mainly debating.  I'd rather see the debates be the main focus than everything else.  We could feed the homeless for years or rebuild our infrastructure with all that money wasted by candidates for the President.

2) We already have a bunch of nut jobs in power.  So I am not too sure how it could get worse with multi-party.  If a group is at the fringe or barely represented it isn't like that party/group will be able to pass a majority vote for their cause (unless it is a good cause/isn't too radical).

2) We already have a bunch of nut jobs in power.

You nailed it

@Baalzamon, yea that 8.2k is for 30 hours which is a year (15 hours per semester, I am pretty sure 12 is still full time but most people take least 15 hours per semester). A lot of the high school things you just mentioned didn't start happening in most states till around 2000 or so.  So I couldn't get college credit in high school in Ohio because they just started allowing that after I graduated high school.

I understand that generally the college educated people make more money.   My degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Management hasn't even helped me find a job in that career.  Problem is that there are too many Wildlife majors for the little jobs.  I have applied to about 1,000 or more wildlife jobs since 2007 and received one offer for part time job in FL which I denied because I couldn't move there for a part time job.  So my field is pretty much filled with people with more experience and I can't get any experience because no one will hire me.  So I work in manufacturing field etc until one day maybe I will get my chance.....

The only thing I can thank my degree for is the 16k in federal student loan debt.

1) Lets follow through with that notion. If you vote for anyone that does not win - local or state, your vote doesn't count either. If you vote for a Republican congressman, and the Democrat wins, your vote didn't count because of districting.

Don't forget that the money spent goes somewhere. Businesses make the signs, produce the TV ads, and so on. So the money does go somewhere and helps out businesses. I do agree that we need to change the way elections are paid for, preferably with a set cap on what can be used, or something to focus on the issues, not who has the most money.

2) Never disagreed with more parties. I would like more. Just a matter of getting the right people into 3rd parties.

Well that really stinks :( , I'm still attempting to get through college without any debt.  It will be tough when I like to spend too much money on games and candy, but I'm still hopeful :)

There is a reason your tuition is expensive, as are the lack of jobs. They are correlated. There is a major demand for college education, which waters down the number of available jobs in given fields. It also increases tuition as there is a greater demand for the education, and a lack of supply.

The answer would be less government involvement in student aid, and the atrocious system that we've allowed to exist, whereby the government has monopolized student loans. If we didn't give out as many "free" loans, there would be fewer students that are merely there for no good reason, and cost would likely go down, and chance of hiring would increase.

I'd centralize the whole deal with a miniscule tax increase somewhere along the line to fund an equal number of commercials for both candidates that TV Channels are required to air pro-bono, and to provide funding to local election offices nationwide to hand out clear-cut informational pamphlets about the candidates. Ban PACs and ban all donations period for Federal elections

@mrstickball, yea I realize that we are in a winner takes all system.  I have a hard time dealing with the electoral college because it is divided by states (and whatever state you live is most of the time predetermined to vote a certain way).  It would be pointless for someone to vote for someone that isn't a democrat in New York for President.  Just like it would be pointless to vote for someone that isn't republican in Texas for President.  Sure there are swing states but usually only about 4-5 matter (Ohio and Florida are the main ones).  So even with electoral college certain candidates will avoid states altogether or barely visit them during the main election because they already know they can't win the state. 

All these reasons of votes becoming worthless either local, state, national election makes me want proportional representation.  At least your vote wouldn't be totally worthless if you vote for a party that would usually never win most elections (libertarians, green, etc).  You would be able to get more parties into the House and Senate than just having republicans, democrats, and independents.  A lot of people are independents in USA and we should give them an opportunity to vote for other candidate that belongs to a minor political party without having them feel like they just wasted their vote or it won't amount to anything.

Voter turnout in USA is horrible.  I blame the system for part of the problem.  I feel that if we had a multiparty system with proportional representation then more people would vote.  Also, we should have a national holiday for election day.  That would help voter turnout also.  Most countries have national holidays for election yet USA doesn't.   Most countries have way higher voter turnout than USA.  Usually it is just the older generations doing all the voting.  Only recently with Obama did the youth actually go out and vote.  I won't go into Obama much besides saying that he lied about almost everything on the campaign trail (getting rid of the Patriot Act, not re-signing the Bush tax cuts, etc).

I watched a few documentaries on Netflix about the whole crises that happened recently.  They had a guy on one of the documentaries talking about bubbles.  Pretty much he said bubbles are destined because you have the early investors into any given area of the economy then people see how much money the first people are making so everyone jumps in thus causing the bubble.  That is pretty much how the first bubble happened with the Dutch over tulips.  Right before the tulip bubble burst you could sell a rare bulb for price of a home then when it collapsed people couldn't sell the tulip bulbs that they paid outrageous prices for anything.  Same thing pretty much happened to the housing market.  A bunch of people jumped in at the very end that didn't even belong there in the first place.  Took out retarded mortgages because they thought the housing market can only go up.  Then it crashed and they were left with more debt than the house was actually worth.  Sure the Fed, banks, and other involved parties could have done something to prevent the housing bubble but no one wanted to.  The main point I pulled from the documentary is that bubbles are destined to happen due to human nature.

The 2008 presidential election had the highest voter turnout of the past 40 years, so I fail to see your argument about proportional representation influencing the number of voters. Turnout is largely tied to if people feel that the election is meaningful, thus why very local elections usually do pretty crummy, unless the people care about the issue.

I do agree that November 4th needs to be a federal holiday, which would allow more people to vote.