Progressive Politics

It makes sense when you realize that the process for parties choosing candidates is not outlined in the Constitution or anything. A party doesn't need to hold a primary if they don't want to, they could just present a candidate.

If/when a party decides to have a primary, they can pretty much do it however they want.

This happens sometimes with third parties. For example, I don't think Ross Perot had to run in a primary. Nader may have (?), but if so it was probably mostly just a formality by the Green Party.

But yeah, I would probably prefer more regulated primaries, assuming it wouldn't just be used to fuck over progressive candidates, which it probably would be designed to do

My impression is that candidate selection is almost always an internal, party political process. How does it work where you are?

It’s that way for primaries. Technically, in the US, political parties are private organizations. As such they can set up rules how they want within certain confines. One of the big ones is the fact that the democrats don’t even have to listen to their base’s vote and instead rely on a separate committee to select their candidate. This caused issues for Bernie Sanders and should have been a wake up call for people.

Now that being said, you’re welcome to try to get on the ballot in the general election as an independent or another party but Americans are so myopic they only see D or R which is a whole different problem.