First, most americans have cable so any law that didn’t bar advertising on cable would be ineffective.

Secondly, you can’t avoid the first amendment via sophistry. I mean try the following argument on for size. The outdoor air above the United States is the common property of the US government (just declare it exactly the same way we declared the government owns the airwaves). Therefore the government can regulate vibrations in that air as it sees fit the first amendment not withstanding.

Or to put it more formally even though the government owns the airwaves the speech crossing them is not government speech and the first amendment still requires the government treat that speech in a content neutral fashion.

I would rather have the open influence of money than say a system of undocumented influence by union leaders, activists groups and anyone else able to deliver organizational help.

Also I worry that this would effectively give whoever controls TV news programs total control over elections. Canidates won’t even be able to choose which issues to raise or contest the frame provided by the media. If there was some strong protection that would ensure that journalists weren’t pressured by the owners I would be more sympathetic but if monetary donations corrupt the possibility to win the election by influencing Ted Turner is worse.

Also it’s blatantly unconstitutional not to mention that it will become totally unworkable in a few years when most of our video entertainment comes from the internet. I mean is the video I made and posted to my blog television?

Firstly, the electoral college should have consisted of the governers plus maybe the leaders of the legislature of the state so they couldn’t become mere proxies for the canidate. Secondly, they were insufficently specific about the manner for state legislatures to elect senators so these legislatures could end up not appointing anyone for long contentious periods. What they should have done is to mandate a particular type of voting (ranked choice or a multiple round system with eliminations each round) so that deadlocks would be impossible.

I’m undecided about bringing things all the way down to the city level because from what I’ve seen of city government it is so inconsequential and easy that people don’t give really weigh the canidates ability very much and media can’t cover the canidates effectively. Thus making city officials elect the national ones would likely just turn the city officials into what the electoral college is today.

More radically, I think we should only have local elections; ie elect only people the average citizen could actually interact with on a personal basis. This would have a few benefits. First off, people would start to care about their local government, which is kinda important in daily life. Currently, most people don’t know who their assembly reps are or the county controller. These people have a lot of day-to-day power and face ridiculously little scrutiny. Second, it would decrease the centralization of money-based corruption. No more big national campaigns. Third, it would get people involved in government directly. Suddenly, your vote does count because you are voting in a small pool. Also, your vote appears to count (unlike now) because it’s not all about the giant national race.

Assuming neither of these things happen — which they won’t — I don’t have a huge problem with lobbyists. As long as they are the right lobbyists!