The House and Senate should be dissolved.  The days of having to have a very small group of people represent a larger body are over, largely because of the internet age.  There is no need, any longer, to have these folks pretending to vote for those they pretend to represent.  It's also high time that the populace is actually forced to take a larger role in this country.  1 Person, 1 Vote.  The President and Cabinet would propose legislation, maybe have a think tank on hand to help write up legislation/amendments etc... then the President pitches it to the people, and the people vote on a bi-monthly basis (for all proposed legislation/amendments).  Tie the vote to SSN# to avoid fraud.

In this sense, we crush special interests, we crush lobbyists, and Citizen's United becomes irrelevant, because they'd no longer be able to really influence anyone other than the President, and the President can't enact legislation w/o the populaces backing.  You'd still retain the structure of Democracy, and you'd still (obviously) retain the Office of the Presidency and their cabinet (would be needed for foreign affairs, etc...), but the actual voting would be the responsibility o f the populace, and not up to less than 600 people to decide for a country of 310+ million.

I'm sure there are issues with this idea, but I think the bottom line is that the House and Senate are simply no longer necessary in a time where you can inform the populace about virtually anything, and it doesn't take days/weeks for news to travel from one side of the country to the other.   This would also have the added bonus of getting more people directly involved in the political process and hopefully encourage people to learn more about the things they vote on.

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Do you have any examples of democrasy's that don't use a party system? But i do agree, we need the bright minds of this world to be able to step in without having to go through an entire party system. If a guy like say Elon Musk would want to go into politics for a certain period of time there should not be anything in his way.

Democracy, so good people should be forced to partake in it. Yikes!

The whole point of the U.S system, which is a good point, is that there are some things the majority shouldn't be able to vote on. The minority's rights must be protected against mob rule. A pure democracy is dangerous for this reason. That is the why a representative legislature is necessary. They consider both the majority opinion and the protected minority rights when making laws. It is also why even on the local government level, when there were only a few hundred people, votes weren't tallied directly but rather through trusted representatives. 

1. It costs $1000 to get your name on the ballot for the New Hampshire Presidential primary.  That's pocket change to any serious candidate.

2. With more parties you'll see more instances of Republicans vs. Democrats vs. Libertarians vs. Greeners vs. etc...  Heck,the Republican party is divided right now between traditional Republicans and the right-wing Tea Party crazies like Ted Cruz. Republicans can't even come together to solve some of our nation's problems.

"Proportional representation is far superior to winner takes all."

Agreed. The original US Constitution had the loser become vice president. Everything changed..

Sort of off topic, but why the hell do our politicians keep letting refugees in our country when we can't even take care of our own people properly?

1. New Hampshire is one of the best states for grassroots and third party campaigns.  It is the outlier. Here are some more restrictive states. Note a lot of the resources third parties have must go into getting petititions signed that surmount to 1% of a state's population. That is no easy, and no cheap feat. This makes actually running the campagin after they had made the ballot much more money-tight. I read a statistic a while back that in many of their voting districts The Libertarian Party must use 50% of their raised funds to get on the ballots.

Arizona - Major party candidates are nominated by the state primary process. Independent candidates are granted ballot access through a petition process and minor political party candidates are nominated by convention along with a petition process; one must collect 3% of the total votes cast in the last election for the specific race or 3% of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election for statewide ballot access. The figure for 2006 statewide ballot access was 41,012 good signatures. Be aware that the validity of signatures generally means that 20-30% more signatures will need to be collected to ensure that the goal is achieved. To retain ballot access a third party has to poll 20% in a statewide race and it will retain statewide ballot access through to the next election.

 New York - To be recognized as a political party, the party must gain 50,000 votes in the most recent gubernatorial election. (There are, as of 2015, eight such parties. Five of them, however, have primarily resorted to electoral fusion and usually only nominate candidates already on either the Democratic or Republican lines; two of those five were blatant fronts for the major party candidates and did not exist until 2014. The sole exception is the Green Party.) This allows for primary elections and allows statewide candidates to be exempted from having to petition. Any other candidate must file petitions. For statewide candidates, 15,000 signatures are required, and there must be at least 100 signatures from each of at least 1/2 of the congressional districts in the state (27 as of 2014). All state legislature and congressional candidates must file petitions regardless of party nominations, except in special elections. 

 Oklahoma - A party is defined either as a group that polled 10% for the office at the top of the ticket in the last election (i.e., president or governor), or that submits a petition signed by voters equal to 5% of the last vote cast for the office at the top of the ticket. An independent presidential candidate, or the presidential candidate of an unqualified party, may get on the ballot with a petition of 3% of the last presidential vote. Oklahoma is the only state in the nation in which an independent presidential candidate, or the presidential candidate of a new or previously unqualified party, needs support from more than 2% of the last vote cast to get on the ballot. An initiative is being circulated during the period September 14, 2007 – December 13, 2007 to lower the ballot access rules for political parties.

2. Since votes on bills are yay or nay, how exactly can that be? Are there more options than voting yes or no that would make Republicans vs. Libertarians vs. Democrats vs. Green?

One thing I'd like to see, as an outsider looking in, is transparency when it comes to campaign funding.

The current procedures were designed for a version of the USA where only a few property owners could vote and senators were chosen by state legislatures. Under the assumption that political parties would not exist.

Out of the 57 presidential elections we've had so far, 4 have had the second most popular candidate lose. 2000 is just the most recent example. 

im not sure if the most important step would be to reduce the influence of states over citizens (a state with 3 electoral votes is wife as important as a legal entity than for its people) or to get a proper voting system that doesn't impose a two party limit. Proportionate voting could work, but there are other superior alternatives, like multiple votes per voter. That would encourage voting for minor parties as well as the big two.