Yes, we can!
There are choice C's in the debate between the status quo and a National Popular Vote(NPV)!
If we follow the "regressive" countries of France and Finland to make our top election into a two stage election then we could spare ourselves the cost of a second national election by having it be at a far more representative Electoral College.
I address the charge that the idea in my last diary is a pie-in-the-sky and simplify it's presentation at a new blog-entry over at A New Kind of Party.
This is not radical.
It gives voters more meaningful options, a chance to run a campaign to be an elector, and, as illustrated here, will elect centrist Democrats or Republicans in less negative or costly campaigns. I mean what's the point of putting gobs of dollars into expensive television ads if it only helps you to become one of the three candidates that go to the Electoral College? Low-information tv advertisements won't go very far with much better informed electors who get to interact with each other and the three finalists in the week following the General Primary Election in early November!
And if the three finalists are all relatively "centrist" by virtue of how all voters would have to pick their three favorites, do we really risk anything by letting the next president be chosen by the Electoral College? Isn't that what the writers of the US Constitution wanted? To avoid ugly politics and the possibility of the election of a glib populist, or a good-looking pit-bull with lipstick, as President?
dlw