TRUMP 2016

[earthJoker]

I wasn't aware that you can write down your own candidate. Still a big disadvantage though.

[Flixy]

At least with a two party system you know what you're getting before the election and we're normally good at weeding out the Trumps and Corbyn's before they reach office, either in the party stage or the general election stage. With a plethora party system its harder to sift out those undesirables. To win in the US you have to win both the primary and the national election, winning the first one without the other achieves nothing.

Don't get me wrong, I can see the upsides of your systems, but I also see the downsides. Same for our own system here. This is just one of those peculiarities

Running without the formal support of the party pretty much does mean that though. You'd need to build your own nation-spanning GOTV effort, for instance, and in not all that much time. There are a whole lot of obstacles. In many respects someone who didn't participate in the primary stands a better chance because they wouldn't have been expecting to have this established support system from the party to draw on for the general election. Anyone who decides to continue campaigning despite losing the primary would be a lot further behind, trying to expand and prolong the network built from their primary bid in ways they hadn't anticipated. And no one in the GOP primary now is exactly a screaming centrist either. "At least I'm not Trump" is not the best motivational message to get a large moderate bloc to participate rather than just stay home.

Last bit is a good point, regarding the first, I could see it happen if the party implodes and a lot of (wealthy) backers and organization also ditches the party.

The parties aren't exactly centralized monoliths. They're aggregations of state parties and even many of those are more collections of county lists than a central organization. US political parties are coordinators and facilitators. The candidate is in that party because they can use it. And the party would have no problem with Trump or anyone else out there just being members, people making donations, proferring their vote, etc. which means they don't have much of a leg to stand on for objecting when the person turns things around and uses them in turn.

I know that, but I find it similarly odd that those people are a member of the party in the first place. Of course it does make sense considering you have in practice a two party system, which means it's practically impossible to run as a third party candidate without the money and organization you'd otherwise have. Over here it's not unheard of that people with too extreme views (e.g. Wilders) are booted from the party and start their own.

I wasn't aware that you can write down your own candidate. Still a big disadvantage though.

Isn't most counting done by machines these days? In which case writing in a name would probably end up not being counted, unless a manual recount is done.

I cannot really believe that it is possible to force someone from running at all. The US is still an open democracy as far as I know, and to me that means everyone has the right to vote and to be voted.

IDK, over here you need to have 30 letters of support from each voting district where you are running, and pay a deposit that is forfeited if you gain too few votes (3/4 of the amount of votes needed for one seat), to prevent simply anyone from entering. Which obviously also means that simply writing in a name won't work here. Also to be eligible for subsidies you need to have a party that meets certain requirements (e.g. Wilders' party does not receive a subsidy because it's not really a party in the sense the other ones are, more of a one man band with subordinates.

[earthJoker]

Isn't most counting done by machines these days? In which case writing in a name would probably end up not being counted, unless a manual recount is done.

Not here, but I know the US uses it. But there is probably a cross "other" and when you tick that, a human has to read what your voted.