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Let me get this straight... Joe drops out and a few hundred delegates just get to choose whoever they want? Is that really how the system works?
(I'm literally asking, I don't have a dog in this fight, I think she's probably as good a choice as the Democrats have, just seems like a weird system)
Basically, yea. The Democratic Party makes the rules for how they pick candidates, and this is them following those rules.
Not only do they make their own rules, the DNC has argued in court that they have no obligation to follow those rules since they can change them whenever they want anyway.
Parties could choose their candidates through Ouija boards and it'd have been fine as far as the law is concerned
Yes, pretty much. We didn't even have primaries until the 20th century. Before that, the party would just pick the candidate at the convention. Even then, until 1968, the primaries were basically just opinion polls, and party bosses were free to ignore the primary results. In the 70s, they started forcing delegates to commit to primary voters' choices, but that's simply an internal party rule, and they could change it at any time. Also, even now, the party has a lot of control over who is nominated. The Superdelegates are not committed to voters' choices, and in 2016, they were the reason the AP controversially called the primary for Hillary just before California voted. The fact that primaries take place over several weeks instead of a single day, like a general election, also gives the party time to place their thumb on the scale for their preferred candidates (something that Representatives Ford and Smith recently admitted the party did in 2020 to give Biden the nomination).
So, tl;dr: yes, the parties can do whatever they want. Until about 50 years ago, the primaries were basically just suggestions, and even now, they party is doing more to select the candidates than you realize.
This dumb shit. I want score or STAR voting.
Yes, parties pick their own candidates and there's no rule saying we actually have to have a primary.
The parties could just put forward whatever candidate they want and push them for president, but if they do a primary they have a better chance at winning because they can select the most popular candidate with voters.
The primary is there for their benefit, not ours.