trooper
Member
I don't really see that any party except Republicans and Democrats is ever going to play a major role on a state or national level. The way your votes are counted leaves no other option. Of course this is just a foreigner's perspective... 
It's basically the same with Labour and Conservatives in the UK. As long as the guy who gets the majority of votes in his constituency is the only one to win a seat all minority votes are indeed lost.
On the other hand I can see that a lot of folks prefer voting for individual candidates instead of parties.
Over here we have a mixed system. In our parliament there are twice as many seats as districts. Only half of the seats are occupied by directly elected candidates. Every voter gets two votes. The first one is used to directly vote for a candidate in your district. The second vote can only be given to a party and determines how strong each party actually is. After the election the parties get to fill up the second half of the seats with their people so that in the end the allocation of the seats mirrors the results of the second votes.
That way even smaller parties who wouldn't normally be able to win a single seat can be represented in parliament. A party that doesn't directly win any seats has to score 5% of the second votes to make it, though. If a party wins more seats directly than it is supposed to have according to the second votes it gets to keep them anyway, and the respective number of seats is added to the parliament for the current legislative period.
Trooper
It's basically the same with Labour and Conservatives in the UK. As long as the guy who gets the majority of votes in his constituency is the only one to win a seat all minority votes are indeed lost.
On the other hand I can see that a lot of folks prefer voting for individual candidates instead of parties.
Over here we have a mixed system. In our parliament there are twice as many seats as districts. Only half of the seats are occupied by directly elected candidates. Every voter gets two votes. The first one is used to directly vote for a candidate in your district. The second vote can only be given to a party and determines how strong each party actually is. After the election the parties get to fill up the second half of the seats with their people so that in the end the allocation of the seats mirrors the results of the second votes.
That way even smaller parties who wouldn't normally be able to win a single seat can be represented in parliament. A party that doesn't directly win any seats has to score 5% of the second votes to make it, though. If a party wins more seats directly than it is supposed to have according to the second votes it gets to keep them anyway, and the respective number of seats is added to the parliament for the current legislative period.
Trooper