To the Editor,

Currently, neither political party allows voters to directly elect their nominee for president. Instead, presidential nominees are elected at party conventions by the party delegates. These delegates who are elected in the Presidential Primary in their own state are not bound to vote for the candidate the voters of their state supported or even the candidate they stated they would support on the ballot.

This was the case this year in the Democratic National Convention. In the Democratic Party, there are also superdelegates who are unelected party officials who have an equal vote to that of regular delegates.

So, the current presidential election system is voters choosing people who pick their party's nominee for them, and then the voters vote again in the General Election for Electoral College members, which are appointed by the political parties, who elect the president for them.

While the Electoral College is unlikely to be reformed or abolished anytime soon, we can reform the Presidential Primary system since that does not require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution and is up to the political parties instead.

A new electoral system could look like this.

Have candidates run in Presidential Primaries open to unaffiliated voters along with voters of that party with ranked choice voting where all the states hold their primaries in one night. The candidate who gets the most votes overall nationally would be their party's nominee for president.

Delegates, superdelegates and party caucuses would be abolished. The voters would be able to directly elect their presidential nominee.

A coalition of Republican, Democratic and independent citizens should get together to create a national campaign to pressure both major parties to adopt a direct popular vote in their future Presidential Primaries. If this is achieved, then we will finally have our first president elected through a democratic primary process.

Nathan Cornell

Warwick