See, I think we can change the Constitution. I've been thinking about this for a couple years. I think we need to start with a couple common-sense amendments for which broad-based, non-partisan support could be garnered. I have 2 ideas:

1. Fractional electoral college voting for president. This would instantly bring all 50 states back into play for presidential campaigns and enfranchise millions of people into the process whose vote for president is hardly relevant currently.

2. Instant-runoff (ranked) voting. This would allow people to vote more closely with their preferences and eliminate costly runoff elections. As a bonus, it might break the Ducorcet Law [1] tendency of "first past the post" to create two-party duopoly.

These are far from end-all, be-all solutions, but I believe them to be steps in the right direction. I truly believe we could get much of the intellectual energy of the country behind these two ideas. I think we're in dire need of something to shake up the status quo. And then maybe we can have some more substantitve debates.