Federal Constitutional Law
Would state boundaries have been adjusted, and would state divisions and mergers, have been more common but for the state-centric structure of the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate? As it is, splitting a state, or merging two states, changes the political balance. Perhaps the best guidance would be to look at how county boundaries within states have changed over time.
Would there have been less resistance to granting statehood to D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam, but for the state-centric structure of the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate? This would still dilute the power of the existing states in Congress and (apart from D.C.) in Presidential elections, but only modestly.
Would a constitutional amendment to give D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam (and any subsequent new territories that are not U.S. states), the same representation in the U.S. House that they would have if they were U.S. states be politically viable? While giving territories that are not U.S. states seats in the U.S. Senate are barred from even being constitutional amendments, the same limitation does not apply to the U.S. House.
A constitutional amendment to directly elect the President would have wide support in every, or almost every state, even small states that benefits from the status quo.
A constitutional amendment weakening the U.S. Senate vis-a-vis the U.S. House would presumably be constitutional, since no state would be deprived of its equal representation in the U.S. Senate. For example, what if legislation that was passed in the U.S. House, but not passed in the U.S. Senate within eight months, could become law if it was readopted in the U.S. House with a 60% majority and signed by the President? What is approval of Presidential appointments and treaties was transferred from the U.S. Senate to the U.S. House? What if a Presidential veto could be overturned by voting to override the veto in both houses by majority vote?
Congress could, by statute, authorize or mandate proportional representation in elections for the U.S. House within each state, eliminating gerrymandering.
Why didn't the Founders have Congress, sitting in joint session, elect the President, rather than having a separate electoral college? It would have had the same political balance between U.S. states. It would have left voters with a single thing to vote on in federal elections prior to the direct election of Senators. It would have avoided national election recounts. It probably would have made the President more responsive to Congress. Better yet, what if the President could be replaced by a vote of a joint session of Congress at any time, in lieu of impeachment.
A constitutional amendment to reduce the number of Senators from 2 to 1 per state, or from 2 to 3 per state (with one elected every two years) would be constitutional, and either approach would make more sense, except that it would unbalance the electoral college (which an increase in the size of the U.S. House could fix).
Presidential Ballot Access
24 candidates were listed on the ballot in at least one state and over 100 candidates were registered as a write-in candidate in at least one state.
Third-party and independent candidates received 2.13% of the vote in the 2024 election, totaling over three million votes. This is slightly more than the 2020 United States presidential election, when third party candidates received 1.86%.
Green Party nominee Jill Stein received the most votes of any third-party candidate, receiving 868,945 votes (0.56%). She received 1.09% of the vote in Maryland, her best state by percentage. Stein also received over one percent of the vote in Maine and California. This was also the first election since 2000 that the Green Party finished third nationwide, and the first since 2008 that the Libertarian Party failed to.
Withdrawn independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received 757,371 votes (0.49%). Kennedy's 1.96% in Montana was the highest statewide vote share of any third-party candidate. Kennedy also received over one percent of the vote in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia.
Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver received 650,120 votes (0.42%). He was the only third-party candidate to be on the ballot or a registered write-in candidate in every state + D.C. Oliver received 1.69% in North Dakota, his best state by percentage. Oliver also received over one percent of the vote in Utah and Wyoming.
No other candidate reached one percent of the vote in any state. "None of these candidates" received 19,625 votes (1.32%) in Nevada.
Party for Socialism and Liberation nominee, Claudia De la Cruz received 167,772 votes (0.11%).
From Wikipedia.
Trump's popular vote margin was 1.5 percentage points, which was less than the percentage of votes cast for third-party candidates. None of the third-party candidates came anywhere close to winning even a single electoral vote.
It would be possible to greatly shorten the Presidential ballot without unduly impacting the ability of any candidate with a meaningful chance of winning even a single electoral vote or influencing the ultimate outcome in any state, making ballots for voters simpler.
One plausible threshold for ballot access would be to require candidates for the Presidency to affiliate with a political party having at least one elected official in federal, state, or local elected office. Most of the candidates would be eliminated that way, but none of the viable candidates would be, nor would the Green Party or Libertarian party candidates who did best of all of the third-party candidates who were still running on election day.
Another plausible threshold for ballot access would be to require candidates to have previously held a statewide elective office (for state or federal office) or as Vice President, or a cabinet post, or to have served as a general in the U.S. military. Trump, when first elected, is the only President ever to have failed to meet this threshold.
Congress could pass legislation overcoming the SCOTUS nullification of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment's ban on insurrectionists holding political office in the U.S. (which was a horrible decision not supported by the language of the constitution or its structure or many past precedents).
It would make sense to have a uniform set of candidates for President nationally, although the mechanics could be tricky. The current Presidential primary system isn't optimal, is long, and deprives lots of people in lots of states of any meaningful say in the process.
State and Local Politics
State legislatures have been required as a matter of U.S. constitutional law to apportion seats in their state house and state senate in the same way since the 1960s. Why has only Nebraska shifted to a unicameral system?
Why hasn't even a single state deviated from the single member district system in any house of its state legislature? Some form of proportional representation could eliminate gerrymandering, isn't prohibited by the U.S. Constitution or federal law, and could be put in place by citizens initiative even if the two major political parties were opposed to it?
Why does essentially every U.S. state have the same political parties for federal office as it does for state and local offices? Only a handful of U.S. states have roughly a 50-50 balance between the two major political parties. But almost all of them would be close to 50-50 if each state had its own state political parties for state offices. This would give voters in states that lean strongly left or right from the national political balance much more meaningful choices. What would that look like in Utah or Wyoming or California or Massachusetts?
In theory, states have a lot more freedom to enact tax policies than the federal government does. For example, while there is reason to doubt that a federal wealth tax would be constitutional, a state wealth tax faces no obvious constitutional barrier.
