Bluebird of happiness

I wouldn't expect more than two parties with real power, other than during transition times when one party is being born and one is dying, because we don't have proportional elections. I would prefer a proportional system where if the Republicans got 40% of the vote and the democrats got 50% of the vote and the Greens got 10% of the vote (numbers made up and skewed to make me happier than some other possibilities) then we'd have 40% of the seats going R and 50% going D and 10% going G... maybe a system where you can vote for the party and the person of your choice in the party. If the greens win 3 seats, the top 3 greens votewise get those seats, but people who voted green and for green guy #4 still help give the greens a seat. And maybe with the ability to vote for an individual of X party and vote for Y party if you don't like X party except for Y guy. I'm not sure... I'd have to give thought to the details, but I think something working along those lines would please me a lot more. Because currently if your party gets 10% of the vote, it's 100% useless, so your party doesn't, it gets 1% of the vote, because lots of people don't see the point, and so it's hard for parties to grow even when people like them, since everyone has to decide it's worth it at the same time.