We need to get rid of our ridiculous systems for choosing our president and our candidates for president

A year of state by state caucuses and primaries, some open and some closed, for each party followed by a national convention for each party just gives big money contributors a long, long time to starve out candidates for nomination who scare them silly.

We need a single, national, closed primary for each party for all offices followed by a runoff of the two leaders for any office for which no one gets more than half the votes

The conventions after the primaries can nominate the winner and hammer out their platforms.

Similarly, abolish the Electoral College and let the voters choose the winner as the French do, in a first round of voting followed by a runoff of the two leaders if no candidate gets more than half the votes.

No more first past the post.

Make both rounds of the primary and the general national holidays and let people do absentee and early voting.

And if that doesn't put an end to campaigns that last more than a year and give billionaire donors too much importance we can forbid campaigning earlier than the last few months before the first round of the primary, which themselves cannot be scheduled more than two or three months before the general.

Yes, squeeze the conventions in between.

We can handle midterms in the same way.