@Zaku I don’t so much mean that the parties are like sports teams, but that the way people/voters relate to them is often like the way they relate to their teams. Especially this year I have seen people with political flags in their trucks driving around, wearing insignia, dressing up, chanting… it’s largely the same behavior that sports fans do. More importantly, I think the voting logic and thinking (or lack thereof) patterns are similar: irrational stubborn loyalty to their team mainly just because it’s their team, and/or repeated reasoning that has near-zero chance of changing.
Having a limited number of points to distribute would be better, but if they were still just added up to determine the winner by the highest total, there would still be a reason to inauthentically give all one’s votes to the candidate one thought was the lesser evil of the candidates thought most likely to win.
What can really make a voting system much better able to represent actual preference for more than two candidates, is being able to rank the preference, or at least to say Approve or Disapprove to every candidate.
There are a few possible variations, but they all are very possible and in use elsewhere, and provide a very good answer to the “lesser of two evils” problem.
A popular version that actually made it to consideration recently (but was drowned out in Trump-related-ridiculousness) is called Instant-runoff voting .
And yes, I meant kooky independents, thanks!
Cookie independents, I would tend to rank several levels higher, depending on their non-baked policies.