Re:Off-topic question (Score 1)

We didn't used to have political parties. In fact one of the founding fathers, I do not remember which, said that a two party system would be the death of this democracy. I believe that the reason that there are official parties today has to do with ballot printing. Each party used to print its own ballots, but that lead to problems and so a centralized agency took over the printing proccess, but which candidates do they put on the ballots? Any native born citizen over, I think 35, can run to be president. They had to decide how to choose which candidates were serious enough to put on the ballot. They needed to keep costs down, if nothing else. Can you imagine a ballot with even 500 candidates for one position?