Reply #3: That's exactly how we do state legislatures....

[Davis_X_Machina]

...here -- a candidate comes and talks to the town Democratic committee (We fit into two booths at the pizza joint) but a US House seat is up to 10x the size of a Westminster constituency, and the largest states (for Senators) are up to 100x as large. Whatever you do has to scale to that level.

In the 1850's Lincoln was nominated for President by Illinois by a cascade of open Republican conventions at the town, then county, then state, then national level. So earlier. alternative structures to primaries existed once.

I live in a caucus state, myself, and don't have a problem with it. But the caucus -- and that's what the UK basically has -- has a terrible reputation in the progressive community for not being inclusive. Primaries were one of the big-P Progressive movement's slate of process reforms back at the turn of the 19th century.