A Report on the Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries

I think the most interesting (and perhaps hopeful) aspect here is that people now have an expectation of fairness in the selection of party candidates. That's a relatively new phenomenon. In the past, I think people widely assumed that the party was biased towards individual candidates. Even now, that's clearly the case when the sitting President is a candidate. I personally think that expecting an unbiased party structure is unrealistic, given the very nature of the organization. The party doesn't have a product, other than its opinion. The idea that an organization of partisans only arrives at that collective opinion through primaries and caucuses seems quite naive to me.

To me there is an unquestioned premise to the article: why should the state [as in "government"] conduct elections on behalf of political parties. Enrolling voters as Democrat or Republican or whatever and then restricting the voter's access to ballot items based upon that enrollment [or non-enrollment] does not seem to be the business of the government.

A political party is free to change the rules for nominating candidates however and whenever it chooses. It is free to nullify the decision of those voting in a particular primary. A political party is free to nominate whomever it chooses [and almost certainly multiple candidates for the same office it wishes should it choose].

Ultimately the party, not a judge, chooses whose vote matters and whose doesn't. Placing the imprimatur of the state upon a political party's process doesn't change that or make the process of candidate nomination little 'd' democratic. The people within a political party charged with making the rules for candidate selection are not elected or selected little 'd' democratically. The process of nominating candidates is not little 'd' democratic in any meaningful sense.

Which is why in California certain races are top-two win. For example in the "primaries" two democrats were the top-two vote getters, so the general election ballot will only have democrats on it.

Why does it seem that we in America can only count to two during election season? Or, less facetiously, what keeps us fixated on the polarizing, binary approach to elections, even in cases where first-past-the-post isn't strictly followed (as in California's first-two-past-the-post case)?

Whenever people talk about alternative voting systems, the consensus seems to be that it would be impossible to implement in the US. But why? What drives this obsession with choosing between two evils rather than choosing among several, where one's own views might stand a better chance?

The state I'm in can only count to one for some offices. I spend a lot of time writing people in for the uncontested races.

But with regard to your question, the obvious explanation is that the voting method itself acts as a game theory attractor for a certain number of "viable" candidates, until a Nash equilibrium is reached. First-past-the-post thus eventually results in an entrenched two-party system.

This alone is ample reason for those two parties to resist any change to the voting method. Anything else might undermine their duopoly.

Just FYI, but your local vote counters hate you. I've done it before and write ins are a pain. If you know people who want to hold office, why are you writing then in instead of getting them on the ballot?