"But 2016 and 2020 have both offered strong evidence that American elections are, in the electoral college, bound to be close. Barring the emergence of a strong third party, 2024 will be a repeat of 2020, which was a repeat of 2016, but lacking a deadly pandemic the incumbent utterly bungled in responding to."

A few swing states should not be able to determine the outcome of a national election of the POTUS. I promote proportional allocation of state Electoral College Votes: the statewide popular winner receives two ECVs and the remainder of the state's ECVs are allocated according to the D'Hondt/Jefferson method or something similar. This would result in candidates campaigning in all states and residents would feel like their vote actually counts. No Constitutional amendment would be needed.

As long as single choice plurality voting is implemented in most state elections there will be no emergence of a strong third party due to the wasted vote and spoiler vote concerns. Expanding state congressional districts with multiple seats and implementing proportional representation of political parties would reduce divisiveness among state residents.