I'm not an American citizen, but I lived in the US 1994-2002.
May I tell you guys, you need to end the bipartidarism model. Most vices the system has is a direct result of having too little choices in the general election. It makes it too easy for a strong economic force to buy both sides.
I studied this subject quite in depth, as my Brazil has this ridiculously stupid proportional voting system for the municipal, state and federal houses, and I'm engaged in a serious movement to move to a district voting system.
In the process of learning the different district voting choices, it quickly became apparent that France and Germany have far superior alternatives cause their system makes it easier to have many viable political parties:
1 - France uses a runoff election should the best voted get less than 50%+1 votes, including all candidates with at least 10% of valid votes, an alternative is being able to vote first and second choice, with the runoff being just another pass at the votes, using the 2nd choice for votes where the 1st choice went for low vote candidates
2 - Germany uses a mixed district voting where a variable number of seats are awarded to makeup for imbalances in voting between districts (like one party gets 40% of seats with 50% of total votes would get 10% extra seats to make up)
In both cases a voter can go for a 3rd or 4th party without being worried his vote will be wasted if his candidate doesn't win
Just food for thought. Americans have this habit of not learning from other countries, so I thought I pitch in with this data.
Sorry for the off topic.