I think it's tough to defend that view in light of the way states have corrupted elections throughout our history. Even today, as soon as the Supreme Court invalidates some portion of the Voting Rights Act with we're-not-getting-wet-so-why-the-umbrella logic, those states are ready to jump on the opportunity to corrupt their elections.
That's an interesting jump. I don't think I suggested you can't associate in groups as you choose. But there are some definite drawbacks to political parties - they tend to flatten complex topics and to force-team things that a lot of people don't necessarily want to have lumped together. Independents have been a growing cohort over time, and the more flattened the Dems and Reps get, the more Indys there are. I'm far from alone on this - there are some topics that I think Reps have a better take on, some I think Dems have a better take on, and a whole lot of topics where I think they both have their heads up their backsides.
Or phased runoffs. I'm sure we can come up with a hypothetical solution, we're all smart people. Well, okay, most of us are smart people.
If you're suggesting we ban political parties, you are going to run into freedom of association problems, because parties are fundamentally groups of people organized to some political end. It's notable that California's blanket primaries were invalidated by the Supreme Court back in 2000 because they could force parties to accept someone who wasn't a member (in any sense) as their candidate. If that doesn't fly, you can be confident that banning parties altogether won't, either.
Its not a jump at all. You stated: "I'd go a step further and just get rid of parties". A political party is an association of people who come together to further their collective political aims. The only way to "get rid of them", would be to make them illegal.