You know what would really hellp this country out?

Proportional Representation. For those who may not be familiar with the term I'll try and explain it. Also if I make any mistakes please feel free to correct me, here goes. Lets say for example in the next election the Democrats and Republicans each gain 40% of the vote. Then lets say the Socialist party gains 10% and the Libertarian party gets 10% as well. The make up of the next Senate would be 40 Democrats, 40 Republicans, 10 Socialists, and 10 Libertarians. What do you all think? Good idea or is there some flaw in the system that I'm missing?

Each state gets 2 senators.

Where would the 10 socialist senators come from?

If California votes 60% democrat, 30% republican, and 10% socialist, 2 democrats would win. How would you feel if a socialist got a seat, and a democrat didn't. Senators are supposed to represent a state, so if you have one less person fighting for the democrats interest in your state, its tougher to get things approved that the democratic party wants.

Personally I think it's worth whatever changes it would require to the Senate/House system to implement proportional representation, but I recognize that the Senate/House system is written into the Constitution and hard to change.

It's also worth doing on a local level, where you have more flexibility.

But in general, there's lots of ways to game a winner-take-all system that don't apply to proportional representation. One of the biggest is the 'spoiler effect', which is what you get in America when a far-right Democrat runs against a nutcase Republican with the warning "dare to vote for a leftist party and the Republican will win." Using this argument is a direct admission that the election system is broken, and unable to represent the people.