Often, I hear talk in the US about the dismal state of the two-party system in our political arena. Many times, the people talking the most about it think we would be better off with more than two, sometimes many more than two. While I believe that there may be some benefit to multiple parties (by multiple parties I mean more than two), remember that, as in all design decisions, there are tradeoffs. By spreading your resources (votes) across multiple endpoints (parties), the ability to see significant results goes down dramatically.