10 really great questions about our current election system. check 'em out. (i've copied the majority of the article below):
"Commentators are talking about red states, blue states, morality voters and other issues when the main topic we should be discussing is how badly the campaign process functioned and how hard we should be working to bring our 18th-century democracy into the 21st century.

1. What would you say if your bank manager told you that you really didn’t need a receipt for your bank transactions and that you should trust him to make sure that your accounts were in order? Congressional Republicans left Americans with no way to conduct recounts in their districts. Electronic voting leaves no record for verification. Reports of machine malfunctions and seriously inaccurate vote tabulations are coming to light and should be pursued vigorously, but the bigger non-partisan issue is this: Why are we allowing corporate voting-machine companies to privately own the tools of democracy? Why are companies such as Diebold, owned by mega-fundraisers for the GOP, allowed to keep the codes and procedures for vote tabulations secret even from those jurisdictions that purchase their machines? And why can’t they provide paper trails when they do so for millions of bank transactions every year?

2. Why do we allow any group of voters to be intimidated? Where is the non-partisan outrage now that the partisan fury has subsided? Can we get rid of archaic state laws used to challenge voters, and can we establish a constitutional right to vote — something not presently embodied in our nation’s founding document?

3. Why do we allow states to be categorized as blue or red when up to 49 percent of the voters in some of those states do not follow the victorious party? Isn’t it time we had some form of proportional representation so that everyone’s viewpoint gets acknowledged?

4. Why do we have only two viable parties in this country? Both presidential candidates supported the war and did not support universal, single-payer health insurance. There are pro-gun, anti-tax Democrats and pro-abortion gay Republicans out there, but the lack of a multiparty system turns us into two-dimensional people. With instant-runoff voting, reduced barriers for third parties and public financing of elections, we each can feel completely supportive of candidates and parties instead of feeling as if we are voting for the lesser of two evils.

5. Why do we accept as a given that candidates must raise millions and take months off from their jobs to run for office? Is that why we have so few schoolteachers, nurses and other process-oriented professionals in our legislatures and state houses? Is this good for the quality of public discourse or the representativeness of our elected officials?

6. Why are television and radio stations allowed to make mega-profits from campaigns? We the people own the airwaves — they rent them from us. We should demand that every candidate gets some amount of free airtime and every race has at least one public debate aired in its entirety.

7. Why are over 95 percent of our members of Congress re-elected every two years, most with no real opposition? And why were so many incumbents at every level allowed to go through the electoral cycle with no debates with their challengers?

8. Why do we cling to the 18th-century relic known as the Electoral College instead of moving toward the direct election of our officials — as most other democracies in the world do? Is it fair that the concerns of only the third of us who live in the so-called swing states were considered important?

9. Why do simplistic notions like “morality voters” go unchallenged? Every individual has a personal set of morals even if some are considered immoral to others. Is killing a fetus worse than killing Iraqi civilians in what some consider an unnecessary and unjust war?

10. Speaking of morality, where is the moral outrage against the leaders of churches who advocated the victory or defeat of candidates from their pulpits? These religious leaders threaten the tax-exempt status of all of our houses of worship and their congregations with massive fines resulting from violations of federal or state election laws.

Given these and other questions, democracy-loving Americans of every political persuasion should be demanding that Congress and our state legislatures get to work immediately to make fundamental changes in the way we vote."