The laws I'd make for national elections

Election season in the United States has become like the worst, most commercialized aspects of Christmas: it starts way too early and lasts way too long. Campaigning for position of the Republican presidential nominee began in the middle of 2011, which is utterly ridiculous. Of course, the reason for this was that Iowa moved their caucus up to the first week of January, naturally pushing the campaigning up as well. Watching this mess, I thought, "wouldn't it be nice if it were illegal for campaigns to last longer than a year?" This led down the slippery slope to all of the other things wrong with the electoral system in the United States. Thus, here's how I'd run things:

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