The last few Presidential elections have had third parties. This is good, in the sense that more issues get debated, and voters are offered more choices about those issues.
The problem is that there can only be one President, so it has to be a winner-takes-all election. (The House and Senate don't have to be that way.) So, a vote for a third party might be a "wasted" vote. Some people find themselves voting against someone, rather than for someone. There's got to be a better way.
There is, and it's called preferential voting. (This site calls it instant runoff voting.) The idea is that you vote for a first choice, but also for a second choice. Here's an actual example:
381 votes for Galaxy QuestSo, The Sixth Sense came third and was out of the running. Each ballot for The Sixth Sense was then treated as a vote for that ballot's second choice. Those 238 ballots had, for second choice:
349 votes for The Matrix
238 votes for The Sixth Sense120 votes for Galaxy QuestSo now the totals were:
93 votes for The Matrix
25 votes were blank.501 votes for Galaxy Questand Galaxy Quest was the winner of the Hugo award.
442 votes for The Matrix
This may sound complicated to operate, but in practice it isn't. Australia uses this quite successfully in their federal House of Representatives elections.
And that's all that's needed. The "wasted vote " issue vanishes. You vote for someone, instead of against someone. Third parties get their fair chance to live, and to have their message heard. I think that that's positive.
The Constitution does not tell states how to run Electoral College elections. So, any state could operate the Presidential election this way, within its own borders.