No. One of the core and essential functions of political parties is that they help solve the problem of adverse selection. As a voter, you are expected to make a choice about what sort of policies you would like, without necessarily having perfect information. When you vote for a party candidate, you can generally be sure what the candidate stands for.
If they’re a Democratic candidate, they probably favor things like progressive taxation, environmental regulations, and affirmative action for minorities.
If they’re a Republican candidate, they probably favor lower taxes across the board, fewer regulations, and generally laissez faire economics and social policies.
Pretending parties don’t exist is like sticking your fingers in your ears and going, la la la. Pretending that groups of people with similar ideas won’t join up and form an organization to economize on campaign costs and advocate collectively for shared policy planks is ludicrous.
They are an inevitable outcome of virtually any representative democratic system and rather than fight them, it is critical that major and minor party candidates compete in a political system that is fair to all of them.
To be clear, I don't see this as "fighting" the parties. Rather, I see it as a way to avoid institutionalizing them. There is nothing about the parties in the constitution and we should avoid providing them with institutional recognition like this. When you vote in the United States, you are voting for a candidate-- not a party, as you do in the UK. When voting for an individual, their name is what matters. If a candidate wishes to include their party affiliation in the voter information guide, they are free to do so, and that will have the added bonus of guiding voters toward that resource.
We don't have to fight the parties, but at the same time, we don't have to make it this easy for them.
In the UK, you are also technically voting for a candidate (the MP for your constituency), a party, and if an MP switches party they are under no obligation to trigger a by-election. The parties’ names do also appear on the ballot, in fact party logos also have to be printed. Although you are right in that it is more clear what each party as a whole stands for as they run on a manifesto, the policies within which there is a much greater expectation to enact if the party wins power than those within a US party platform.
I think removing party names is an interesting proposition, but I would disagree, as often it is much harder to find out exactly what the candidates stands for than what their party does. In state legislative races, many candidates don’t even have a website or Twitter account. It would also discriminate against voters who are low information not because they’re lazy but because they don’t have internet access.
There would be nothing stopping candidates registering and adding Democrat or Republican to the end of their name on their filing papers if party ID was removed from ballots.
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