Nope. You need to meet requirements which vary by state. Most require some mix of signatures (often thousands) and fees (can range from hundreds to tens of thousands). The high barrier to entry is another long acknowledged problem (example: https://www.cnn.com/2012/01/22/politics/newcomers-campaign-c...) which has only gotten worse. If you want to stand a chance to win (and you'd be a fool to spend the time and money to enter if you didn't) expect to spend many millions. (see https://mcfn.org/node/7427/2020-us-house-races-cost-868-mill...). Go ahead and count the number of people in congress who were living paycheck to paycheck before running for office. Most of them are not millionaires by chance.
It's also worth mentioning that primaries are not required to be fair, as we saw when the DNC colluded with Hillary's campaign to undermine her opponent and install their preferred candidate ahead of the 2016 primary election.
> Ranked choice or any other voting system is not going to change this dynamic
experts disagree with you, and for good reason. There's zero incentive to not vote for the candidate you want in office when your vote will go to your next choice if your preferred choice cannot win. The problem we have now is that we're forced to vote for who is most likely to win no matter how we feel about them. There is research showing it would increase voter turnout and it would also open the door for more than just two parties expanding our options. There are issues that come with ranked choice voting, but the biggest problem is that it confuses voters and that problem can be solved by education and acclimation.
> Voter suppression is yet another exaggerated bogeyman
Once again, experts disagree with you. I can provide sources if you like.
Gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression have a significant impact on the outcomes of elections in opposition of the will of American voters. In short, people who would not have been elected into office are being elected because voters are silenced. Any scheme intended to prevent eligible American voters from having their votes cast or counted should be abhorrent to anyone who cares about democracy and research shows that the practice hurts voter turnout as well (people whose votes are being rendered meaningless unsurprisingly don't vote as often). For someone who seems so concerned about voter turnout you're awfully dismissive of things which would change that for the better.
I don't claim that the American people don't have a role in the decline of our democracy. We certainty have been complacent and we have allowed ourselves to become discouraged and conditioned to accept things as they are, but I can't pretend that the system hasn't been systematically refined over hundreds of years to limit the power of the average citizen to effect change or influence policy and anyone can see that what we have has not been working for us. You vastly overestimate the ability for the average citizen to enact change (see for example: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...) but the fact that we, that you, haven't been able to do it so far says it all. We all share a responsibility for how things got to where they are, and a responsibility to reform the system which is failing us, but if it's still possible to enact change with the system we have today it's going to be a very difficult fight.
Sure, there are some minimum requirements for running, it doesn't fundamentally change any dynamics here, it just raises the bar. It's always convenient for primary losers to blame their loss on party favor like Hillary's case, even though it simply amounts to increased marketing and exposure which, as was evident in the 2016 elections, does not win elections. As with all marketing, it only works by increasing the reach of an already good product, it does not mind control voters. I'm going to assume you personally did not vote for Hillary in any primary, you had no trouble resisting this diabolical collusion yet I suppose the implication here is that everyone else is just too weak minded to self-determine their own votes in the face of increased campaign financing. The simple reason you need to be a millionaire is that any serious party always has one or more massively popular candidates that already represent the majority of issues that voters care about, there are rarely any major gaps in representation, the easiest way most candidates can distinguish themselves when the main issues are already represented is by increasing exposure. But if voters care about a major gap in representation, they will find you. If you completely solve this problem by lowering minimum requirements to zero, it will simply change the minimum size of these relatively small gaps which also lets increasingly small & fringe extremists into the party.
> The problem we have now is that we're forced to vote for who is most likely to win no matter how we feel about them. There is research showing it would increase voter turnout and it would also open the door for more than just two parties expanding our options.
You are not forced to vote for who is most likely to win, every candidate knows that if they don't represent certain issues it will depress turnout and lose them votes. That's because people are not forced to vote for who is most likely to win, in fact they don't have to vote at all. In the next sentence you even point out that it will just increase voter turnout. Again, I don't doubt that, but the votes it accounts for are insignificant compared to voluntary abstinence, it's a minor distraction. Like I said before, it will at best equilibrium on the most borderline issues but parties will quickly realign. The same is true for gerrymandering, it has a suppressive effect but it does not defend against a serious consensus among actual voters, it simply raises the bar for one by a certain amount. You simply don't have a serious consensus on issues like marijuana and healthcare. A serious consensus is formed by voters prioritizing it in the voting booth, not answering "yes I care" on any of these academic studies.
For someone who seems so concerned that the system is largely broken you're awfully focused on only fixing the tiniest of cracks in the face of voluntary abstinence. This is the equivalent of fussing over expensive & fancy gym equipment to fix your workout when your biggest problem is that you don't workout often. Americans have never needed the most theoretically optimal voting systems or the best anti-gerrymandering policies at the cutting edge of democracy. They have democracy at home, if they have any problems they just have to use it.
For the record, it went far beyond "marketing". In this case it was the DNC prepping Hillary's campaign by leaking questions in advance of debates, denying the Sanders campaign access to critical voter data (which they only restored after he filed a lawsuit against them), strategizing with her campaign on ways to turn democratic voters against him (including the suggestion that they attack on the basis of his religion), changed party rules to increase the number of Hillary's delegates, and established a joint fundraising committee to secretly launder money into her campaign.
That's not to say "marketing" wasn't a part of it too. The DNC pressured the media (including MSNBC) to be favorable to Hillary's campaign and leaked information to reporters they hoped with hurt Sander's campaign. The DNC also leaked info they had on Sanders to Clinton's campaign staff and they paid people to attack his supporters online.
They didn't even deny they rigged the whole thing. In a lawsuit filed against the DNC over their actions the lawyers for the DNC stated that they had no legal obligation to follow their own charter and had every right to "go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.”
Senator Murkowski of Alaska lost her party's primary but ended up winning from write-in votes.
San Francisco's "mainstream media" could fill their front pages with as much praise and justification for the District Attorney as they want, it didn't stop him from being recalled with historic turnout. Getting the media to favor you doesn't mean squat if voters disagree.
The voters are always the biggest factor. Party leaders can pick bad candidates as much as their bosses - the voters - allow them to.
"Nobody votes for who they want in office" is a natural result of high political polarization and the inherent polarization in any democracy, when that many voters hold competing and conflicting priorities then of course practically no one gets what they want. Spinning this as some kind of evidence that American democracy is broken makes no sense when this is said about practically every democracy, including democracies that use ranked choice. Ranked choice or any other voting system is not going to change this dynamic where the will of millions of disagreeable voters are condensed into a relatively small committee. Alternative voting systems are a trade-off like any other and at best will just move the needle a bit on a handful of issues. Voter suppression is yet another exaggerated bogeyman, it's largely a fight between two equally well-funded factions and the votes it accounts for pales in comparison to voluntary abstinence.
Of course the problems go beyond which particular asses sit in Capitol Hill, it goes right up to the asses that sit in the United States, including the people who promote the distracting fable that the system citizens repeatedly voted for (directly or not) is the fault of other people.