This may end up getting is own thread, but the teaser headline got my attention: Don't blame voters for Trump, blame the stupid way we vote. -Slate
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How could a major party grant a guy like Donald Trump a puncher’s chance at the presidency? This fiasco of an outcome—landing Trump one step from the White House—might have been avoided with a simple change to the GOP’s nomination process. Don’t blame Trump’s ascent on economic anxiety, or racism, or the media. Blame it on the way we hold elections.

This is a problem in so many ways. It is why parties have so much power; it is why our "Representatives" don't represent us; it is how a marginal human being can become a nominee. "Winner-take-all" skews elections and makes them unrepresentative. The rationale is to help States, not voters.

The solution the author presents is "approval voting."
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In his excellent 2008 book Gaming the Vote, author William Poundstone explored the problems with our current voting system. “The plurality vote we use in America is mathematically the absolute worst way to vote,” Poundstone told me by phone when I spoke to him recently. Why? For one thing, Poundstone estimates that roughly 1 in 10 of our presidential elections has been swung by a “spoiler” candidate who alters the outcome. The example that lingers in recent memory is that 2000 campaign, in which Nader siphoned votes from Gore and very likely threw the election to Bush. But it’s happened many times before—in 1848, 1884, and 1912, to name a few. Allowing the second-most-popular candidate to win a three-way race is a “catastrophic error,” in Poundstone’s view. And it could easily be prevented by switching to a different voting system.

A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.

Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich