>The main thing is most people aren't so strategic so they vote in their own
>party primary.
But voting at general elections is by secret ballot, so surely it would be impossible to ascertain whether most people who register to vote in party primaries actually vote for the same party?
> Second, if you do vote in an opposing party primary, you
>can't vote in your own.
This would seem to be an advantage only for the incumbent candidate, who would be more confident of being allowed to stand for re-election.
> But there are definitely cases where people have
>strategically tried to influence the nominations in opposing parties.
>
>So the parties from the grassroots level have the coherence of the
>collective choice of the voters in each party, not of power from party
>leadership.
I can't follow the meaning of this last paragraph, could you re-phrase it? It seems to be saying something along the lines of party candidates being selected by the grass-roots of the party, which is theoretically a good thing of course. However I can't reconcile that notion with the reality of candidates being selected by a constituency which, in the main, aren't even members of a party, have no committment to the party and may even be political opponents of the party whose candidates they are choosing.
There are few other jurisdictions (Iran is one) which restrict the meaningfullness of the ballot, by restricting the choices available to potential voters. It is a very token form of democracy. How can it possibly be intended to facilitate political parties in presenting a coherent and consistent platform and slate of candidates, when it is obvious that it has the opposite effect in practice? Our assumption must be that this is the main intention, rather than just an unintended effect of trying to achieve the exact opposite.
After all, if the law intended to give the grass-roots of a political party control, wouldn't it be easier to simply legislate to force the parties to select their candidates by a ballot of party members? Perversely (if this is the object) the US system lets any man and his dog have a say in the question.
It seems to me that, if the decision were left up to the party leadership, this would at least give members of the party *some* influence, more than taking the decision out of the party's hands entirely. Assuming of course that party members have some way of influencing the make-up of their party organisation's leadership.
The most glaring aspect of the system in fact is that it is quite impossible to see how any alternative new radical electorally-oriented political party could ever get a foothold under this system. A small political party that threatened to get an electoral foothold could quite easily be sabotaged by opponents. Their preferred candidates, who agree with their platform, prevented from ever getting onto the ballot and in fact replaced on the ballot by candidates with a hostile political platform. By definition, a political party representing minority views, could be swamped at its own primaries by voters who disagree.
So, in theory, candidates representing minority viewpoints would have to be individual candidates, high profile celebrities, rather than anyone representing the grass-roots of any organised political party. Preventing for all time any new cohesive democratic political party starting up, as they regularly do in democratic countries.
And, I can't help but observe, so it is in practice as well as in theory. It is no accident though and nothing to do with any exceptional feature of the US electorate. Its the system. The only way to change it is to change the system.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas