I included this in another post, but it was long, and I think this stands alone. A former teacher taught me the concept of "vote to control the crazy," meaning: In the U.S., there are open-primary and closed-primary states. The primaries are the mini elections that help determine who will be each party's candidate for the Presidential election. In an open primary state, anyone of any registered party can vote. In a closed primary, only people who are registered with that party can vote in that primary. Our state is open primary, so even though he always voted for a Democrat in final elections, he would go to our state's primaries for both parties and vote for the candidate he thought was the least insane in the Republican primary. Presumably, if a lot of Democrats/left-leaning voters turn out to a Republican primary and vote for the least extreme guy, they can gatekeep the biggest extremists from ever getting to run for President. Said teacher does this so religiously that he gets calls from the Republican National Committee asking for his opinions on surveys because he has voted in every single one of their primaries for the past 15 years.
