That said, be careful what you wish for. We seem to be getting a lot of big buildings approved without the necessary additional parking. Also, downtown is basically all restaurants or random business offices. There are very few shops and boutique that cause people to walk around and create a vibrant downtown scene like MV, PA, Burlingame or San Carlos. The city also doesn't seem to have much in the way of budget beautification or schools so it still looks quite rundown and property prices are depressed comparatively, even in the nice parts of RWC due to the school ratings.
It's such a convoluted system; it seems so, uh, undemocratic(?).
Reforming it I believe would require a Constitutional Amendment, which is virtually impossible to accomplish in the current political climate.
That said, the electoral college is largely a formality. Much more important than the fairly remote chance an elector might vote against the will of his state is the fact that most states have winner-take-all systems, wherein you get all of the state's electors by winning a majority. Even that has only proved problematic thrice: once in 2000, once in 1888, and once in 1876. And I think there are reasonable arguments in its defense: you force candidates to have some geographical distribution of support, for example. If it was based on solely on the popular vote, you could win the election with massive majorities in a few populous states and no support elsewhere.
It's also balanced out, I think, by the fact the Presidency is, relatively speaking, not all that powerful of an office in America anyway - his most important power is "figurehead/scapegoat in a bully pulpit." Other than that he gets a veto over legislation (which Congress can override), command of the military (which is funded by Congress), and gets to appoint some top level executive offices and the judiciary - subject to Senate approval. Hypothetically Congress can also remove him from office via impeachment.
So command of the most powerful military complex in the World. Who in your opinion is powerful then? ;o)
For example, all commissioned officers are approved by the Senate, and the Posse Comitatus Act prevents the President from using the military to enforce domestic policy. Congress also has the sole authority of appropriating money to the military and they can attach whatever strings they want.
There is probably not single individual more powerful than the President, but Congress as a whole is by far the most powerful branch of government. The Presidency doesn't even compare. That said, I think what we've seen over the past several years, and will continue to see, is that dysfunctional Congresses increase the power of the Presidency.
(The electoral college is an anachronism, though).
> This year’s U.S. presidential election is confusing for everyone.
Yeah. Presidential election. That's who you think about, right? Trump, or Hillary, or maybe Gary Johnson if you're like me.
But it's so weird: they have all this other stuff on the ballot! Senators, congresspeople, state assemblypersons, governors, county boards of supervisors, even your mayor and city council members.
And if you're in California, there are probably fifty ballot propositions to worry about too! Who has time to think about all that? It's so much easier to just think about one contest: The Big One.
So yeah, I definitely appreciate your comment. Perhaps now I have shamed myself into thinking about all the more local issues that really do have much more effect on our daily lives.
Living in Menlo Park (CA), this is very real. I look at our neighbors Palo Alto and Redwood City with all the development and activity there. Compare either of those downtowns with downtown Menlo Park and see which ones are hopping and which one ain't. The local joke is that we want to Keep Menlo Dark. It's a nice quiet downtown, where nobody has to bear the burden of running a successful restaurant or retail shop.