Idea: how to get better presidential candidates

[Giraffe]

OK, this might be a little loony...

Personally, at the end of every election season, I'm so sick of all the obnoxious TV ads and scummy campaign tactics that I never want to vote again. I invariably end up voting for the candidate who makes me less sick, and I never feel good about it. The problem, as I see it, is that negative campaigns work, even though people hate them. However, what kind of mechanism is that for choosing a leader?

the proposal:

Abolish the electoral college. Every citizen gets one vote for a single candidate or two votes against a single candidate. Whoever has the highest positive total wins. No candidate can win with a negative number of votes.

So, to win, you can't just sicken less people than your opponent. You have to actually make people like you enough to spend their vote voting for you.

Thoughts?

[Ambumax]

Unfortunately, this wouldn't actually accomplish what you're hoping for.

I think that candidates would probably start out fine with positive campaigning, but as soon as there was a large difference, they'd dig out the old negative ads, in the hope of keeping the other guy from winning. Better to have prevented that jerks victory that to have done nothing at all.

[Duke]

Well, I see one potential drawback to it. Since you have two negative votes to one positive vote, any "major" candidate is bound to lose, because only half the voters opposing him/her need to cast their negative vote to cancel out all the positive voters. So, in this year's election, Democrats vote for Gore and against Bush and Buchanan; Republicans for Bush and against Gore and Nader; a bunch of people don't like Nader, Buchanan or Browne and vote against them, till what happens at the end is....

"...and the winner, with one positive vote, is...HOWARD STERN?!?!?!"

[Giraffe]

Yes, it's obviously not the most realistic system...

I already thought of the Howard Stern problem. To keep out the total nuts, you could impose a minimum number of votes required to win. (i.e. even if you only have one positive vote point, you have to have received at least 100,000 votes, good or bad.)