> There are almost always only 2 choices - the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate.
I’m an immigrant so some of this may be wrong, but the party system in the US seems to operate very differently to that in most other countries.
Primaries make races far more focussed on the individual representative so there is less incentive for serious third parties to emerge as their potential candidates can instead challenge an incumbent in a primary within the same party affiliation.
With voters registering with an affiliation rather than joining a party as a member and being subject to that party’s rules, so far as I can tell there is no way for a party to prevent someone from running under their banner so long as they win the primary.
The whole point of this kind of voting is that you would have to relay on primaries. You can just put up 2 or 5 candidates per party without hurting the parties chances of winning.
I’m an immigrant so some of this may be wrong, but the party system in the US seems to operate very differently to that in most other countries.
Primaries make races far more focussed on the individual representative so there is less incentive for serious third parties to emerge as their potential candidates can instead challenge an incumbent in a primary within the same party affiliation.
With voters registering with an affiliation rather than joining a party as a member and being subject to that party’s rules, so far as I can tell there is no way for a party to prevent someone from running under their banner so long as they win the primary.