Plurality Voting: Why Third Parties Don't Get Elected in the US

I'm going to provide some of my ideas as to the reasons why third parties don't get elected to political office in the US more frequently.  Why do the choices seem so limited and poor?  Why does there seem to be a failure to represent the views of the electorate?  I also want to offer some solutions.

The Problem: Plurality Voting

Plurality voting is the simplest form of voting.  It is well known how it works to those who are registered to vote and have begun participating in elections.  The premise is simple and there are two stages, if everything goes according to plan.  The first stage is the primary where voters select a candidate from each political party to represent that particular party in the second part of the election, the general election.  Depending on the state, voters can participate in either one party's primary election, or the primary election of the party that voter is registered with.  In the second phase the entire electorate participates.  Voters then go out and select one candidate out of the pool of those selected to represent their party in the general election.

In the US there are two major political parties: Democrats and Republicans.  Occasionally so-called "third-party" candidates, representing views deviating from the aforementioned two, emerge in the general election (the media plays a role in the disenfranchisement of these candidates, but a discussion of that is better left to another blog post.) Often, one or both of the candidates of the two major parties will try to adopt one or more of the views to win over this small, but often enthusiastic group of the electorate.

Voters commonly select candidates from the major parties, despite frequently preferring an alternative candidate, because of the real concern that these candidates often have a much smaller chance of winning.  Justifiably there is concern their vote might go to the major candidate they least prefer--in effect they end up voting for the lesser of two evils.

It is fair to call this a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If it is thought that third-parties can't win, they wont.  The phenomenon also provides an explanation for why elected candidates always seem to consistently poll so poorly on performance in general.  Additionally, it highlights a major problem the winner-take-all system.  So lets fix that.  Here's how.

Alternative: Instant-Runoff Voting, or IRV

IRV solves some issues with plurality or winner-takes-all voting.  There is no need for a primary election.  Candidates are ranked with a number only used once.  They are ordered by preference.  The votes are tallied in a series of rounds.  In each round a candidate is eliminated, and the next preference voters voting for that candidate is used sequentially and a winner eventually emerges.  While this system provides some solutions to some of the troubles it introduces a slew of others, and is more complicated than others which are simpler.  Namely, ranked voting.

Solution: Introducing Ranked Voting

The fix I prefer is to eliminate the primary election altogether as before.  A single general election is then held and the electorate ranks all the candidates from all parties on a scale of A-F or 1-10.  When the votes are tallied, the candidate with the highest median score wins.  It is a very simple system, and can represent voter preference more accurately and completely.  A voter can give candidates any rank they want, even the same one, allowing a very wide gamut of views to be expressed numerically as a voter preference.  Not only this, but it provides  incentive for candidates to reach out to as many people as possible.  Additionally, because of the mathematics, the system punishes voters that try to game the system.  In other words, there is a strong motivation to rank candidates honestly.  This is exactly what a voting system to do.