Reason #362 our electoral process is broken

People across the country were all amped up this week for Super Tuesday, when 24 states held their primaries or caucuses. Given the level of media coverage on Tuesday night, you would have thought it was a national election. Apparently people in Florida, Washington and Texas thought it was, and showed up to vote even though their states' primaries were not held on February 5th. It's no wonder: our election system is FUBAR. MSNBC has a great Q&A on how it all works. There are a total of 62 questions. Granted, some of them are pretty irrelevant to how an actual election works, but still, 62 questions? It should be as simple as:

1. Candidate says, "I am running for president." Campaigning begins (that's another ball of wax).
2. Citizens vote in the (one national) primary to narrow down the candidates for each party. The candidates from each party with the most popular votes win. Now time for the real campaigning.
3. Citizens vote in the national election to determine the winner. The candidate with the most popular votes wins.

I know our founding fathers thought the general population was too dumb, fickle, easily persuaded, etc. to be trusted with directly electing the president. I guess my lead-in kind of affirms that. But that doesn't mean that a system created 200 years ago still makes sense today. The 12th Amendment was passed after the Jefferson/Burr debacle that required 36 votes by the House of Representatives to elect Jefferson president, so we haven't always been idiots who stick to a system just becuase it's always been done that way. (Full disclosure: I really didn't know anything about the Jefferson/Burr thing until I found this site. Great detail pages on Presidential Campaigns and the Electoral College.)

After the last two presidential elections, it's become clear that something needs to change. Any ideas? Mine is already outlined above. May the best man or woman win.