In US elections we should eliminate political parties

Let us start with a bit of Historic background. When George Washington became president, America did not have political parties. There were those who opposed him who were known as anti-administration but nothing formally resembling a party. Prior to this you could have a position on certain issues that where people would label you, for instance those who want a strong central government were Federalists and those who didn"t want it as strong and who had pushed for the Bill of Rights were the Anti-Federalists, but these were labels of position and still not truly parties. During his time in office the beginnings of parties formed where the followers of Jefferson formed the Democrat Republicans (formerly Anti-Federalists mostly) and those who followed Alexander Hamilton formed the Federalists. He worried about the rise of political parties. In his farewell address he warns. "However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. " The problem then with parties is their tendency for corruption. We can see this with our two current parties. Any other party or Independent who tries to challenge them is shot down by the two parties working together and the doing everything they can to ignore and marginalize them. There is actually quite effective propaganda to get you to only vote for one of the two parties. If you don"t vote for the lesser of two evils, you let the greater evil win" is one of the most common ones. Ultimately, voters should vote on a candidate not based on what letter they have after their name but their policy positions. While in theory a party presents a representation of certain policies, in reality it just oversimplifies everything and doesn"t give a voice to those who have a view not represented. With our 2 party system it creates a false dichotomy of ideas. Even if a third party becomes one of the main ones, it becomes corrupted if there are not more choices. That is what happened to the Republican Party, in the 1850s it was a third party competing to replace the Whigs. Parties blind people in partisanship so they can"t look at the issues objectively and instead it is "us vs. them" instead of each individual looking at the individual views of the candidates. Many municipalities have non-partisan elections. Notice on your profile on this site how it lists both ideology and party. That demonstrates there is difference. Am I saying we need a law to outright ban people from associating with parties? No that is not my argument but I am saying we would be better off to disassociate in that way and that they should play no effect in elections. The largest portion of Americans are Independents yet most still vote for one of the two major parties. The fact that they are independent sows they feel disenfranchised. [1] The two major parties bully people and sue them off the ballot. [2] Another issue is top two primary regardless of party (as in what they have in California), while it effectively makes political parties unimportant, it limits choices in the end. A better option would be a ranked choice voting. That would help that problem. [3] Another option could be a straightforward vote for whoever gets the most votes as they originally did. Perhaps they could set a threshold say 15% for anyone to get to the general. People could run with a running mate for president like they do with parties except without a party label, like Ross Perot did in 1992 before the Reform party was formed for him. Parties stifle other ideas that do not fit into their narrative. The way it is, it"s pretty much red team vs. Blue team with not much care for what ideology the candidate actually holds. It"s more of the binary black vs. white thinking. [4] I will leave you with yet another quote from one of our early presidents. John Quincy Adams Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost. I look forward to the next round. 1. . http://www.gallup.com... 2. . http://www.freerepublic.com... 3. . http://en.wikipedia.org... 4. . http://phys.org...