Leading questions:
Representative vs Direct Democracy?
Unitary or Federal?
Presidential or Parliamentary?
How much separations of powers should there be? In presidential systems, such as the United States of America, there is often deadlock between the executive and legislature. In parliamentary systems, the head of government is elected by legislature, therefore, there is practically no deadlock as long as theres is majority support of the executive in the legislature (although, there can still be courts to determine constitutionality of policiss). Would you prefer more checks and balances, but can also result in more deadlock, or a government more easily able to enact policies, for better or for worse?
Electoral method? FPTP? Two-Round? Ranked-Choice/Single-Transferable Vote? What about legislature? Should there be local districts? Single or Multi member districts? Proportional-representation based on votes for a party? If so, how should the party-lists be determined?
Should anti-democratic parties be banned? Or should all parties be allowed to compete in elections, regardless of ideology? In Germany, they practice what's called "Defensive Democracy" which bans any political parties (and their successors) that are anti-democratic. Some of banned political parties include the nazi party.
How easy or difficult should the constitution br allowed to be changed? Majority support or some type of supermajority support?
Should we really elect officials, or randomly select them via sortition?
These are just some topics to think about, you don't have to answer all of them.
Edit: Clarified some things
American democracy could be significantly improved just by adding term limits Senators and Representatives, plus an age cap for Congress and the President. Taking steps to break the two party system would be even better.
I personally like Germany's approach to parliamentary representation, where you vote for both a district representative and a party. Once the district seats are filled, more seats are added until each party is proportionally represented. This goes a long way to reducing the spoiler effect and helping third parties get a voice.
I know this is a controversial take, but I actually like the electoral college in principle. The goal of the electoral college is to balance the interests of urban and rural voters so that whoever wins the election will hopefully be good for both. Currently, electoral votes are distributed based on the results of simple majority votes at the state level, with some states including a 'winner takes all' rule. If it were up to me, I'd instead use state level alternative votes or something similar, and ban the 'winner takes all's rule.
However, I don't think we will see any of these in a very long time, if ever. The current system benefits the people currently in it, why would they change it? IIRC, the UK had a referendum to switch voting systems years ago, and their two biggest parties banded together to pressure voters to keep the existing system.
I've read before that removing term limits for congressmen would actually increase influence of lobbyists. Reasoning being that greener politicians have less resources and would be more reliant on the help these types of lobbyists could provide.
Whereas someone who has been there 30 years likely has an established power base and set of alliances.
I don't think an age limit would change much and would remove potentially good choices from the population. The older you are, the more experience and wisdom you pick up. Obviously at a certain age you start to lose mental acuity.
But that age is different for everyone. Chomsky is in his 90s and he still frequently gives interviews and remembers random dates and details from decades ago. It all depends on the individual.
When I used to work as a cable tech in my early 20s, I would go into people's houses to install internet / cable TV. I've seen 70 year olds who look dead inside. They just sit around watching TV on the couch. They've essentially given up on life.
One time I met a guy who was 95. He answered the door smiling with his shirt off and holding onto a towel around his neck like he just got out of the locker room. Guy goes to the gym every day. Still serves as a board of director for a company. And he bragged to me about how he found a 75 year old girlfriend.
That 95 year old had more life in him than many of the 70 year olds I've ran into.
At some point age catches up with you. But I don't believe in an age cap. Let the American people decide.
Having said all that, I agree with you that electoral college is a good idea in theory. I don't really like the winner takes all set up, though.
Yeah, and it's really not hard to imagine why strict term limits increase the effect of lobbying. Consider this thought experiment:
You're a relatively young 30-something hoping to make a change in politics. You run for office and somehow get elected! Great, right?
Well, now you have to actually do the job. Most of your time is not sitting in the hall of Congress, Parliament, etc. voting on bills; it's much more mundane things like writing bills, meeting with constituents, discussing draft bills in committees and subcommittees, etc.
The thing is, however, there are no real job requirements to being an elected legislator. No job posting saying "minimum 5 years experience with drafting bills". Here you are in office now, zero experience with actually legislating, and you have to actually write bills.
Suffice to say, you're probably swamped, struggling, and have no clue how to actually do your job. And along comes some guy from a group like ALEC, and he's got a pre-written bill for you! Great, right?
Well, you're not totally lacking in dignity, so you're a little suspicious, right? He's a great salesman, though, and really tries to reassure you that the content of the 200-page bill he just handed you only does things you actually like. Further, he tells you that the things in it that do help him aren't so bad, and they're good for you and for the people at large, too.
You walk out of that interaction not totally comfortable, but hopeful that maybe it really is a decent bill. After all, he seemed like a nice chap, representing what seems to be just a group of concerned citizens... Anyhoo, you decide to give it a skim to make sure it seems legit.
You crack it open and see hundreds of pages of legalese and countless appendices full of definitions and edge cases. Further, it's discussing some economic or industrial matter, and you're just some guy, not an economist, and you're not equipped at all to understand the nuanced impacts of the proposed policies on the market or wider economy. Or maybe it's sociological and you barely know anything about sociology. Or maybe it's technological and you know little more about technology than how to use Microsoft Office and what you read on the news.
You think about asking someone for help with understanding this bill, or perhaps drafting your own, but you realize you have no connections. You don't know any federal judges or constitutional scholars who can give you off-the-cuff constitutional advice. You don't know any fellow legislators well enough to feel comfortable asking them for potentially months of mentorship as you find your footing. You don't know any economists you can call up and ask economic matters. You don't know any experts on the Iowa pig farming business to tell you frankly about how that industry operates.
But what you do have is a lot of lobbyists willing to pretend to be your friend, willing to pretend to be a mentor of sorts, to sell you biased information on their particular brand of snake oil.
And maybe you think for a moment that you'll just tough it out and ignore the lobbyists! But you realize another problem with that: not all of them are sleazy snake oil salesmen trying to earn special favors for their political or industrial agenda. Many of them are actual legit people representing actual organizations just trying to advocate for good policy.
Trouble is, you don't know who is who. The sleazy guys will try their hardest to appear legit, and the non-sleazy guys will of course also try to appear legit. Both kinds of lobbyists know you won't listen to them if you think they're the sleazy kind.
So you take a chance on this particular lobbyist, do your best to make sure the bill they handed you wasn't completely terrible, and submit it. You're too tired and stressed and unsure in yourself to do much else. You tell yourself you'll try to tough out the beginning and become a better legislator in the future, once you get the hang of it. You know accepting the lobbyist's pre-written bill ain't the best, but it's probably not too bad, right? It's just one small bill, affecting one relatively small issue, and at least it doesn't affect you, right? There'll be no media firestorm over this, you and your family won't personally be impacted by some minor changes to the hog industry regulations. And besides, you'll get better at this job and do better next time, right?
Anyhoo, long story short, legislating is a profession like any other. It takes real skills, knowledge, and experience to do well, and you need to be able to balance the ability to get rid of old do-nothing geezers and the ability for more junior folks to actually be able to gain experience and institutional know-how. A company run solely by junior engineers would be a disaster, but a company run solely by complacent do-nothing senior engineers would also be terrible.
An excellent description of why I don't believe in random elections. Political parties will always exist to gather the political expertise to do the work politics do.