Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
Primarily that someone who doesnt feel represented by the two major parties won't be wasting their vote if they support a third party that is ideologically closer to them. Also party leadership has to be more responsive to their constituents because there are real alternatives.
General elections seem to provoke this kind of anxiety in some people.
Let's say your priorities or beliefs is that we should all live in space, and most of our national budget should go towards advancing technology to live in space. Neither of the two parties are really on board with that. You could run for office yourself, or support a challenger to your Representative who also believes in living in space, or write to your Representative and try to get others to join your space movement, and maybe others around the country also have similar priorities and do the same. Eventually if it's successful, one of the two parties should adopt Space Party ideas into their platform. At the very least, your representation would more closely reflect your space values, as you'd have Space Party Representatives in Congress.
Just because you don't like the two people running for President right now, and you think your vote is thrown away on a 3rd party candidate, doesn't have anything to do with the effectiveness of the US political system. The opportunity is there for you. Maybe your values aren't that different from one of the two major parties after all. Or maybe your values are that different and would require a lot of work to bring like minded people together to get that representation. Or maybe you are just anxious about the cult of personalities that seems to be the case in a general election.