I do not know what juristiction you are referring to.

Where I live, we have a multi-party electoral system at the national and local levels. It's not perfect democracy, but minority factions may present their views and may get candidates elected.

Consider Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV.

Voting for party lists instead of personalities has its drawbacks, too:- populist parties with simple, believable, but hard to realize slogans can secure massive voting percentages (like: we will half unemployment, lower taxes, double public spending and reduce public debt)- few people know their local MPs- MPs tend to be uncharismatic figures with no opinion on their own, who just repeat the party slogans and lick the party bosses boots to secure their place on the voting list

(come to Germany and experience for yourself)

Might be interesting. Right now we have two houses elected pretty much the same way. The senate used to be selected by the state governments, representing the state in the union more than the people.

How about we alter the senate to a parlimentary system where you vote for a party, and the party gets the appropriate amount of representatives?

I said this before on the centrist party idea but i think it's still relevant.I know the 2 party system gets a lot of flak these days, but I believe that it's a potential source of strength. The American system is fundamentally a conservative one, not in terms of politics, but a more traditional definition of "avoiding change." In the short term, this means that America has tolerated all kinds of horrific ideas including slavery, Jim Crow laws, etc. In the long run, the system has led to the most stabile democracy the world has ever known. Having a two party system means that the person that wins has to appease a lot of people, which makes political debate blah and makes pandering important, but it does mean stability.Of course stability in a vaccum can be oppressive, but do you people feel like parliamentary systems with their coaltion governments are superior? By the way, there have been third parties in America's history, and when they are successful, they tend to signal the end of one party and usurp its role.

Austrailia's INSTANT RUNOFF system might work, where if your #1 pick is not in the top two, then your second choice gets your vote. Then you could vote for a fringe guy who has no chance (thus sending a message) but still not "wasting your vote".

I don't like the two party system, but without it there would be chaos. If you had a multi-party system, then there would be 100's or even 1000's of parties running for office. At the presidential level, the federal govt. provides money, protection and information to people running for office....if there were multi-parties, distributing the money, info and resources would be impossible. Also there would be no clear winner in any election....imagine if the president won with only 3% of the popular vote and the runner up had 2% because 200 other people got <0.4% of the vote....there would be huge legal battles over the accuracy of the 1% difference and the legitimacy and effectiveness of the winner would be quite low.