Why don’t we, in the USA, simply let ALL candidates run in one election and allow voters to vote for all the above? Then, the top two winners would go on for a showdown election? I mean, the present system just seems to whittle down the choices too easily before they even have a chance to collect votes.
You certainly could.
But what are you trying to achieve? Eliminate the time and expense of the primaries?
The idea has merit. However, dropping the threshhold can itself have some unsatisfactory colloraries e.g.
In the 1999 New South Wales election, voters were presented with an unusual physical challenge in trying to cast their votes for the Legislative Council when a record 264 candidates were nominated on a ballot paper measuring one metre by 700mm.
And that’s in one state, total population 7 million. So for the US, multiply that by 50.
Democracy gone feral.
Even if you can have a mechanism to exclude those who are there only for a laugh or a protest you aren’t that much clearer. With the “One Big Ballot” concept you could have a situation where there are a dozen or more worthy candidates on a ballot paper with a turkey shoot of lesser lights, they split the vote fairly evenly and hence you get a run-off between #1 & #2, both of whom polled less than 10% and are from the same political fraction. Or you get a run-off poll of Oprah v Rush.
The point being that you are going to need to sort the grain & straw at some stage. In the US it’s done via the primaries. In parliamentary systems it’s done via the preselection process. The OBB concept does it at the ballot box. Totally valid, but if the process throws up a couple of single issue, populist ratbags as a consequence, you are going to make one of them POTUS.
So the first time the OBB is used it will likely be a total schmozzle. The second time the majors decide that their best chance of winning is to pick and run with their best candidate only so as to not don’t fragment their vote, and you are essentially back where you started.
Louisiana has a primary with everyone in it. It’s called a jungle primary. The top 2 go on to November no matter what party they are in
City elections in Detroit are like that. The primary is nonpartisan, in that everyone is listed on the ballot with no party affiliation. For individual offices (mayor, city clerk, etc), the top two votegetters then proceed to the general election. The nine city council members are all elected on an at-large basis, so for council positions, the top eighteen candidates move on to the general.
Louisiana is the only US state that does that for statewide elections such as governor and US senate seats.
This sounded so absurd I had to look it up. Incredible.
I have a souvenir from that election. I worked as a scrutineer for one of the political parties at a polling booth, and they had a poster, in about 24 sheets, showing the preferences as allocated by each of the parties or groups on the ballot paper. That is, each party or group tells the Chief Returning Officer how to distribute the preferences for the party for the votes cast “above the line”, i.e., votes for the party ticket, rather than votes going 1, 2, 3, etc., for the individual candidates – voters can go either way. The poster is there in case anyone wants to know how their preferences would be allocated.
At the end of the evening, as the guy in charge of the polling booth was packing up, I asked if I could have the poster (knowing that it would get recycled as scrap paper, and that it wasn’t needed for the checking and re-counting of the votes), and he let me have it. My wife hates it, but I’ve still got it packed together in a neat pile – containing about 100 copies of that enormous ballot paper.
In 2003, California voters faced the issue of recalling Gov. Gray Davis, and if the recall was successful, electing his successor. Because of the unusual circumstances, it was a no-primary, all-on-one-ballot, winner-take-all election. A total of 135 candidates ran for that single office. Here’s what it looked like.
[QUOTE=Jinx]
I mean, the present system just seems to whittle down the choices too easily before they even have a chance to collect votes.
[/QUOTE]
Of the 135 candidates, only three received more than 2.8% of the vote. 90 candidates received fewer than 1,000 votes and five received no votes at all, presumably even their own.
Yeah, that last city council race was something, wasn’t it?
The problem with this is the people getting elected are the ones that would have to change the system. Since they know how to work the system so they can get elected, those in power are hardly likely to attempt to change the system.
Also Americans look at the constitution with almost religious awe. Any change to it is considered to be well almost like changing religions or being critical of a diety 
So change won’t happen until something huge propells it. Such as the Great Depression in the 30. Or
There is a ballot measure on California’s primary election next month proposing such a system. I also would support a instant runoff system, where you rank your choices instead of only voting for one. San Francisco city elections have a version of this.