Yeah, this is what I mean.
You said that only former senators or governors can successful make a bid for president because they are the only one's with name recognition and I disagreed with that. Most don't have wide name recognition. They reason they are the ones most likely to make a successful bid is that those are the jobs most Americans think prepare one to be president, and the jobs most likely to help a person create a track record of results that they can use to campaign.
So it's not that they have name recognition before they run, it's that they are the one's who can point to their accomplishments running a state or creating legislation, and use those accomplishments to create a name for themselves in the very early stages of the campaign.
we have 120 members of Parliament, so more than 2/3 of the US
Parliament isn't the equivalent of the Senate. Parliament has 2 houses, and CONGRESS has 2 houses. The Senate is just one of those houses. The other house is "The House of Representatives," which has 435 members. I'm not sure why you want to be competitive about it, but most Americans know it exists and can name significant members of it, as well.
Additionally, we have key figures in the national government who are not members of congress: 16 cabinet members and 9 supreme court judges. I'm not sure how relates to the British System. Knowing those people and where they stand is more important than knowing the senators from Rhode Island, or the governor of Wyoming.
Each state has their own representative government (mine has another senate and another house, and another supreme court). Most states are divided into counties, which also have elected officials, and cities, which also have elected officials. In most places, we also elect our school boards.
It's a butt ton of people to keep track of just those who represent one's self, as well as the leadership of the elected bodies, and the elected officials in the large states and cities. I suspect most Americans can name the mayor of the largest city in their state, even if they don't live in that city.
As to felons not being allowed to vote, in many states the right to vote is automatically restored after serving the sentence
I agree that it is complex and varies from state to state. Civil rights and felons is a dynamic issue right now because the racist way our laws are written and enforced. If you have a chance to watch "13th," I highly recommend it. It is a documentary about mass incarceration in the US. Here is a summary:
"The film begins with the idea that 25 percent of the people in the world who are incarcerated are incarcerated in the U.S. Although the U.S. has just 5% of the world's population. "13th" charts the explosive growth in America's prison population; in 1970, there were about 200,000 prisoners; today, the prison population is more than 2 million. The documentary touches on chattel slavery; D. W. Griffith's film "The Birth of a Nation"; Emmett Till; the civil rights movement; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Richard M. Nixon; and Ronald Reagan's declaration of the war on drugs and much more."
www.imdb.com/title/tt5895028/