No more political parties? Sounds good to me. Sort of the ultimate campaign finance reform. Municipal elections are handled without parties in my area and it works fine.

I suppose that parties serve some self-regulatory function that, hopefully, reduces corruption and demands integrity but they don't seem to work very well.

A prescription for chaos? Has it ever been tried anywhere on a national scale, in modern times

Party politics has done more to damage American government in the last few decades than any other single factor. Yet it continues - with each contest getting a little more corrupted in principle and irrelevant in effectiveness of saving American liberties. Individual politicians are only called into account if the party they represent needs a scapegoat or the opposing party cannot exploit a weakness in any other way. Public opinion is driven by media coverage, (or non-coverage) of singular events, but party culpability can seldom be tied to these events in the public's view because media conspirators so effectively communicate any disclaimers to protect the party system. Let's face it - elections would be pretty dull for media elitists if all they had to do were relay the factual numbers. Naturally, they want to preserve the party system at all costs.

POLITICAL PARTIES