I had an interesting thought this morning: A fractional voting system. Rather than voting for people, we would vote for issues: “I am in favor/not in favor of stronger gun control.” “I am in favor/not in favor of legalized abortions.” Etc. The candidates’ names would never appear; rather, they would have a weighted percentage of a vote for each response - so, say, Candidate A could be 55% in favor of gun control, and Candidate B could be 80%, and these weights would be based on (actual or projected) voting records. Voting in favor of gun control would then result in 80% of a vote cast for Candidate A and 55% of a vote cast for Candidate B. At the end, the computer would calculate the total and cast a single vote for the candidate whose weighted vote totals came out the highest. Thus, you’d be casting your vote for the person or party most in line with your views, not based on the person’s name or party affiliation. I realize it’s a really rough idea and it’d be extremely difficult to make work, but I was trying to figure out a way to steer around the whole “vote party loyalty” braindead crap we get way too much of.