It's that time again, America! Another four years has passed, and it's time for our next presidential election. Now, normally I am one to not like talking about politics like this, and I am going to stick to those principles in a way. There is going to be no mention of my personal standpoint on the election, but I believe there are quite a few things that we, as a nation, could take out of this election.

Get rid of "political parties"

This message is more for the candidates than it is for the people. There shouldn't be "political parties" required in order to run for office. Donald Trump is a perfect example of why. After watching Trump for quite some time, I can almost guarantee that he is not a dead-set Republican. The only reason he is running on the Republican side of the election is because it was probably the only real way he would be able to get his name on the ballot. This is not an insult towards him because chances are a lot of people who are dedicated enough to becoming President of the United States probably would do the same thing. So that leaves the question "why didn't he just go independent?" Well, here is another question, when was the last time that an independent party, like Libertarian, has ever won a presidential election? The answer is never. If we were to dump "Republican" or "Democrat" from the requirements of running, we might see not only more people running, but also more politicians who are honest about their views.

We need more than two real choices

Now, before you get upset and start commenting and saying "but J.P., there are more than two choices. There is Gary Johnson and Jill Stein." Well yes, of course there is, but let me ask you, what are their chances of becoming the next President of the United States? This just brings up the point again of why not a lot of people run as an independent party. Third-party candidates do not get a lot of media attention (which could be a good or bad thing), they do not get funded as high for their campaigns, hell, they do not even get a say in the presidential debates. It is not much of a surprise that these candidates are so underused and never win elections. If we had more than 2 serious choices, maybe we could have more voters in general as well since voters would have more people that they can compare their standpoints to.

Voters need to focus more on issues facing the country, not the candidates

This entire election has been nothing more than personal attack after personal attack when it comes to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It has become so personal to the point where I don't see a lot of voters talking about the candidates viewpoints on issues such as ISIS, the economy, or the huge refugee crisis. Yes, both candidates have talked about these issues briefly, but not anywhere near enough to warrant a serious conversation. The thing is, when it comes to the election, I care more about how much money I'm going to be giving to the government and the potential danger to me and my family and friends that letting refugees into the country is going to be, not how much Hillary Clinton is making off her political campaign or mean things that Donald Trump said over a decade ago. As long as they don't let these personal things affect the way they do their job, who cares? My question is, WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE CARE? DON'T WE HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS!?

Do not trust the media and polls

This point, in a way, adds credibility onto the previous point of personal attacks. The media talks a lot about some of the personal attacks and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump put onto each other, but very rarely do they go into detail about the candidates' standpoints on the real issues facing the country. It doesn't take a half-college educated person to realize just how biased the media is when it comes to presidential elections. The media is not completely made out of machines; it is made out of humans. Humans have opinions, opinions can have a large effect on the way they display their messages. Medias such as CNN, Fox News, or ABC are all going to have opinions on which candidate the group is going to support, and you can be damn sure they are going to use their power on the air to flip "news" in their favor. My advice is to stick to LOCAL media if you're going to look to the media for information, and even that can be a stretch. On top of this, don't listen to the polls that are put out on different websites. Naturally, Clinton-supporting websites are going to say that Clinton is winning in the polls and just as well, Trump-supporting websites are going to say that Trump is winning in the polls. Do not use polls as a vital source of information. Leave that to the electoral college after the election is over.

We need to stress the importance of debates

Debates are few times where the presidential candidates (except for the third-party candidates of course) can come up to the podium and speak to the American people about their standpoints on issues that are facing the country that we live in. In this election's debates, you can easily tell just how biased that the moderators were towards the candidates. While they can't be faulted too hard because just like the media, they are human, moderators should take it upon themselves to not let their personal standpoints get in the way of how they run the debates. We need better moderators like that, but on top of this, we also need more debates so we can listen to the candidates, we need longer debates so that the candidates have more time to talk about their standpoints, and third and most importantly, we need to allow ALL candidates to be able to participate at the presidential debates, not just the Democratic and Republican ones.

In conclusion

We need to see some serious changes happening to futures elections and the 2016 election is just living proof that it needs to happen. These are just some of the ideas that I have that could help improve the way elections are ran in the future.