Besides systemic electoral issues stacked against 3rd parties like Duverger's Law thanks to first past the post, there's also a ton of local electoral "mechanical" bureaucratic issues against them like lack of access to federal funding, impossibly strict requirements to get onto ballots, petty regulations like that.
Yes, exactly this. I don’t know why Americans seem it’s ok that local elections are controlled so tightly by party machinery of either party…if we’re really a democracy, parties should be involved ONLY in fielding candidates, providing them support and a platform, and a nonpartisan body should be in charge of election administration (ideally this would be uniform across each county).
It’s like if Fraternities/Sororities were given control of college admission process.
