This is correct except for the "no accident" remark. The primary system was the result of left wing Democratic reformers trying to take away power from back-room bosses in smoke-filled rooms, built, of course, on a structure in the south that was intended to deny Blacks the vote by having "white" primaries.
Voting is a state and local matter in the US, as kartherine Harris fix of the Florida 2000 election hammered home and as I saw one the grownd close up in 2004 in Ohio when the GOP -controlled election committee deliberately failed to provide enough voting machines to Democratic white working class and minority precincts, resulting in weights in the rain of 4 to 6 hours/ Which many people braved btw. Not enough though. The system's rigged and crooked, no question. You don't even need the voting dead like we have here in Shytown or the disappearing electronic votes that can now be conveniently arranged.
> 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.
>
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