Labeling people as Republican or Democrat is silly and has become meaningless

The US has had a 2 party system for a long time. The two main political parties are called the Democratic party and the Republican party. The names democratic and republican have little to nothing to do with the beliefs of the parties. If you ask the average American they will not know the difference between a democracy and a republic. The way I have always heard it explained is that in a democracy everyone votes directly. In a Republic representatives are chosen to vote for the people. The two political parties don't seem to fit these definitions since the democratic party leans towards socialism and the republicans seem to be just fine with the current election system. Our current election system is neither a democracy or a republic. It is very bizarre and corrupt. In our election system several candidates compete for a spot as the republican or democrat candidate. This is called the primaries. Not everyone's vote counts in the primaries. The primaries aren't all done at once even though they easily could be. Instead they are done one state after another and if a candidate loses in the first few states he will not get the chance to run in later states. By the time the voting happens in Arkansas often the candidate people wanted to vote for isn't even on the ballot and yet they were whenever the primaries went through North Carolina.There is no reason why all of the candidates cannot run at once! Once we finally get to the real election peoples votes may or may not count because of the electoral college. Some presidents have lost the popular vote and won the electoral college vote. Al Gore was voted the president of the United States by the citizens but he lost the electoral college vote and Bush won. There is no need for the electoral college. It is so ridiculous that whenever I tell people about the electoral college they usually don't believe that it exists. Basically whoever wins in a state gets a vote in the electoral college and the states population affects how much the vote counts. For example Romney got 3 votes in the electoral college because he won the vote in Alaska and Obama got 55 votes for winning in California. Why do we need to have the electoral college? It was set up whenever it was not possible for everyone to get to a ballot so that they would have representation but now everyone can easily vote. Whenever the 55 points came from california it basically showed that everyone in the state voted for Obama when really many people voted for Romney. The names democratic and republican have also become meaningless since both parties have changed what they stand for and who they represent so much over the years. Here is one example that I find very ironic. 1850s Democrats main supporters were southern farmers. The democratic party was pro slavery Republicans main supporters were northerners. Anti Slavery. Abe Lincoln freed the slaves and he was a republican. 2010s Democrats main supporters are northerners. They claim to want to help minorities. Leans towards socialism. Republicans main supporters are southern. Claims to support conservative ideas. If a political party can support slavery and 160 years later have the support of almost all African Americans there is something wrong there. It just goes to show you that the Democratic and Republican Parties don't actually stand for anything. They just pretend to stand for whatever will get them the most votes. Also the two party system makes it pretty much impossible for 3rd party candidates to win anything. Has there ever been a president from the Green party? the communist party? It is likely that there never will be. A lot of Americans don't even know that these third parties exist. Many election ballots do not even include the 3rd party candidates. Here in Arkansas they are included in the primaries but not in the real election. I remember I voted for Bob Barr in the primaries in 2008. In the real election his party wasn't even on the ballot there was only the Republican and Democrat candidates. That basically showed me that I had wasted my vote in the primaries since it didn't even count enough to get his party on the ballot and that I would have to waste my vote in the real election since I didn't like either of the 2 candidates.