So you're telling me that, not only are federal elections decided by states rather than votes, but each individual state has their own set of laws to prevent you from appearing in the ballot? And it's somehow still fine because "you can just do a write-in vote"?
My favourite one is the Texan one, where you need to have gotten boatload of votes in order to appear on the ballot.
For a registered political party in a statewide election to gain ballot access, they must either: obtain 5% of the vote in any statewide election; or collect petition signatures equal to 1% of the total votes cast in the preceding election for governor, and must do so by January 2 of the year in which such statewide election is held. An independent candidate for any statewide office must collect petition signatures equal to 1% of the total votes cast for governor, and must do so beginning the day after primary elections are held and complete collection within 60 days thereafter (if runoff elections are held, the window is shortened to beginning the day after runoff elections are held and completed within 30 days thereafter). The petition signature cannot be from anyone who voted in either primary (including runoff), and voters cannot sign multiple petitions (they must sign a petition for one party or candidate only).
In Democratic America, you can only win elections if you've already won the elections.
Of you look at American electoral history, because elections are carried out by States, and you're not voting directly for president, but instead for electors to go to the electoral college, each state had a wildly different way of deciding who these electors ought to be.
Some had elections (property owning white men, only), others had the state legislature decide. If a state chose via the state legislature, they couldn't even agree on how that shit was supposed to work!
And then, early on, there was no expectation that the electors had to abide by the will of the people who selected them. They were free to vote for whoever, like Cardinals picking the fucking Pope!
And any time an election, or anything else for that matter, didn't go the way a state wanted, they would threaten secession from the Union.
It's genuinely shocking that the US didn't immediately fucking implode, given how genuinely batshit its institutions are.
Edit: for more stupidity I just thought of: if the electoral college can't figure it out, how is the president chosen? It's totally vibes based. In 2000, the supreme court just snatched up the ability to do this, effectively stealing an election. But in 1824, when they couldn't decide, it went to the fucking House of Representatives, and they decided!