That an obvious con-man and clown like Donald Trump was able to seize power with at least the semblance of legality points to flaws that need to be addressed, unless we want a repeat of this catastrophe, or worse, in four or eight or twelve years down the line.
The most obvious flaw is the electoral college. Without this holdover from the 18th century, given to us by slaveowners concerned about anything close to a system that posits that "all men are created equal" Al Gore would have been president in 2000 and Hillary Clinton would have been president in 2016. The mind boggles at how different the world would be today if either of those highly capable people had been able to take office.
We're most likely never going to be able to amend the constitution so as to change this, but there are other steps we can take to try to mitigate the damage it causes.
One--grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Each of these has a greater population than Wyoming, and the fact that they have no real political power in our system renders them colonies, their people without representation. Two Senators and at least one representative in the House from each of them is only fair. This should have been done decades ago.
Second--the current number of Congressional representatives is not mandated by the Constitution, but rather legislated by an act of Congress. At present the current system disproportionately favors smaller, more rural, less diverse states and disfavors the larger powerhouses of our economy, most especially California. Congress can pass legislation instituting "the Wyoming" rule, making the population of the least populace state the basic unit of Congressional representation. The smaller states would retain their current representation, but California and other large states would gain. Not only would this help address the disparity in the House, it would make the electoral college somewhat less skewed, since each state's electoral college vote is derived from the formula: the number of Congress rep.s plus two.
Third: Individual states can also help by passing legislation requiring candidates for public office to release their state and federal taxes going back at least ten years. A court challenge to federal legislation like this might prevail, but each state is allowed under the Constitution to set the rules for its elections. Even if only a handful of states pass such a measure--say California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois--it would mean any candidate for president would either have to release his or her returns, or forfeit being on the ballot in those states, making it nearly impossible for them to prevail in a presidential election.
These reforms would I think help insure that a monstrosity like the current administration could never again threaten the very existence of our democracy.
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