Why even bother with candidates at this point? Elections have come to resemble fund-raisers or sports events, and I can’t tell which.
When we go to vote, hand us a budget with all known expenditures listed, and the ability to pencil in a percentage of our nation’s budget to each expenditure. At the bottom, let us write in future programs we’d like and how much of our budget they should get.
Throw away all ballots which do not add up to 100%.
Then average the results, and have a second election for the stuff we penciled in.
We’re about at that stage anyway.