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President is the only office where the votes are cast by who wins the entire state. It's called the Electoral College, and it's constitutionally required. How
by LargeWu 16y ago
President is the only office where the votes are cast by who wins the entire state. It's called the Electoral College, and it's constitutionally required. However, it's not constitutionally mandated that the winner of the state gets all that state's votes. A few (Maine and Nebraska) cast their votes based on who wins the congressional districts.
Otherwise, there are in fact more than 2 parties, they just dont' get as much support, and the two major parties generally like to keep it that way. Occasionally though you will see minor party candidates or independent candidates win major offices.
- logophobia 16y agoNote that I said district/state. Your senate has 2 seats for each state and the house has a seat for each district. This still means that there is no realistic way for a third party to get any sort of real power. Because the votes are arbitrarily divided among districts, only parties that have significant majorities have a chance of winning. Any third party in the USA has very little chance of winning any seat. Even if they have 10% support among the electorate it is unlikely that they'll get much seats. The nice thing about a system without districts is that smaller parties get power approximately in proportion to the votes they get. The coalitions you get in these systems are messy but more fair. It's a bit unrealistic to forbid people from forming political parties on these somewhat vague assertions. Reforming the election system to be more fair to smaller parties should have a bigger effect I think.