>>510227688each state can dictate how they elect the president (in case you didnt know americans dont vote for the president, they give a stronly worded opinion on who the representative in the electoral college should vote for, rarely does the EC person not do it but its happened)
Anyways. each state gets so many ECs. so it becomes a numbers game where you need a certtain amount to win. since the two parties have the most power they dont want a third party to get an EC cause they could lose. in america if 49% of the people vote dem and 52% vote repub then all the ECs in that state go repub not like 2 dem and 3 repub. so winner takes all. that means you dont want to have a third party act as a spoiler. like lets stay a third party got 10% of the vote. dem got 48 and now repub got 41 . well now all 5 ecs go to dems instead of repubs. boom you lost election.
now we could change this and 1 state main has done it but the other states dont want to do it because that means the president wont compaaing as hard there since he got get a big win that pushes him over, he will only get a proportial vote.
basically its prisoners dilema all the way down.