Donklephant has these suggestions:
- Make election day a holiday, so people don’t have to take time off work to vote.[...]
- Implement instant-runoff voting, so voting for the individual has more meaning.
- Make ballots easy to read[....]
- Lower barriers to voting, notably by not forcing people to stand in line for hours to cast their ballot.
Hear, hear! However, while I once was on the instant runoff voting bandwagon, I now lean more towards either having legislative superdistricts, with multiple individuals representing each district (and with individuals being able to vote for only one candidate…), or with going for a more parlimentary-style election.
Sadly, the elected officials with the power to make this happen tend to find such changes against their best interests.
Have you looked at Single Transferable Voting? It is basically a multi-seat version of Instant Runoff Voting.