ABSTRACT
The structure of the American party system reflects the decentralisation of authority under the Constitution and the sectional diversity of American society; it reflects also the problems of political organisation in the most electionconscious nation in the world. There are approximately one million elective offices to be filled in the United States, and in any one year there may be 120,000 or 130,000 elections held, most of them for local school boards. Inevitably, the electoral system that regulates the filling of these offices is one of the structures that most faithfully reflects the geographical factors in American political life, because constituencies are based upon geographical areas, but it has other important dimensions as well. The complex election machinery makes full allowance for the expression of the individualistic and personal elements in the American electorate. It gives to the individual voters almost embarrassingly rich opportunities to express their views on the personalities of the candidates, and to enter fully into the processes of choosing those who will govern. Party organisation, already fragmented by the effects of federalism and the separation of powers, is subjected to further disintegrating forces by the introduction of primary elections, by the use of the long ballot, and by the opportunities for split-ticket voting. The complexity of the electoral system is due in large part to the fact that the electoral law, whether it relates to federal, state or local elections, is almost wholly a matter of state law, with wide variations in practice among the fifty states.
