No shit! That's our fucking election system. After the primaries, we wind up withtwo candidates that most people don't like, and we vote against the one we think is worse. It's been this way for a very long time. Case in point:
https://youtu.be/riDypP1KfOU?si=xwlInd1CS9p7rYcT
Acting like this is shocking news is disingenuous bullshit.
Smart in one way but it did cause a lot of storytelling problems because they constantly had to come up with half baked excuses for why it wasn't working this time when just using the transporter would solve a major problem without fuss.