as a centrist, I see them all as pandering sociopaths that pander to different blocks of the electorate, and having achieved some success (eg, reelections) with those strategies, considers them to be the holy sacrement of thier respective parties.
Repubs going agains big business? heresy!
Dems going against immigrants and minorities? heresy!
It's this issue with "heresy" that causes problems. Yes, i would say their behavior is borderline religious in nature, as it seems completely faith based. Even as big business literally destroys the american economy, the repubs oooh and aaaah over it like it was the coming of the messiah. Likewise, even as probes into H1Bs for tech firms are showing systemic abuses by contractors working for the big names in CA, the dems hold fast that H1B visas need to be expanded, not placed under a moratorium or further investigated. (on this issue, it seems only the more centrist types are willing to press for the investigations, that's from both parties, stemming from the dogmatic behaviors of the panderings of both sides.)
as for what a US ballot looks like, we get 2 ballots. The first is the primary election ballot, where candidates are all present. They get weeded out to the basic 2 or 3 candidates that are presented at the actual election ballot.
When combined with gerrymandering, the primary election statistics can bere-interpreted in ways that make statiticians cry, and allow pollitically powerful candidates (or at least "favored") to steal the nomnations, and thus get on the real ballot, when when total vote count does not align with that outcome.
I would actually welcome a more european style ballot being trialed on the US, but such a thing is probably not legal to trial here, as the electoral college system is defined in our constitution.