Voting in the USA: Given the long list of criticisms of First Past The Post, why don't more people demand an alternative?

Possibly they don't realise there is an alternative (being European, I do).

And for some elections, "who's most popular" is the only method you can possibly have. If you're electing one person, nothing else works (apart from the Alternative Vote and the Supplementary Vote, which mostly tend to come up with the same result). Personally I'm not keen on those either as what you CAN get is the election of "least worst of the rest". Using AV, I hate Person A and I'd rather have Person C if my choice of Person B doesn't get elected; you hate Person B and would rather have Person C if your choice of Person A doesn't get elected. Result: Person C wins because they get so many second preference votes, including both yours and mine. But did the majority REALLY want Person C? Of course not.

It is no surprise that the only major country that actually uses AV is Australia (they elect their House of Representatives using it), whose system really ought to be written up in the "how not to do it" section of any textbook on the subject of voting. (To digress, I thought I understood Australian elections until their latest change to the system for electing the Senate, and now even this physics graduate has lost the plot. The last time I felt like that was when I tried to understand string theory, or when at university I got lost with second-order partial differential equations in three dimensions.)

The fact remains that with three or more candidates that all get some votes, you will NEVER get who the majority of the country actually wanted, because it isn't mathematically possible. There is no clear majority for anyone. Which is of course why, as the video explains at length, FPTP inevitably leads to a two-party system. It actually hasn't in the UK because of regional differences, but the theory is correct even for the UK when it comes to who can actually form a government.

Some form of proportional representation is best as it solves all the problems with FPTP - you can vote for what you want and that counts, and there's no problem of thinking about who you'd tactically want to vote for to keep out who's worst in your opinion.

BUT proportional representation ONLY works for electing a body of people. And that's where the USA is stuck. The President is one person, and senators are elected one at a time from each state. The only place in federal government you could possibly use it is for electing the House of Representatives, because you're electing all 435 in one go. In state government, you could use it for electing a unicameral state legislature, but you also have to elect a governor - ah, doesn't work for that.

There are plenty of countries that use some form of proportional representation, though, and it works for them because they use a parliamentary system. They elect the lower House (or the only House) of the legislature that way, and the party that gets most seats in that House forms the government. The ceremonial president or constitutional monarch appoints the leader of that party to be Prime Minister, and off we go. If that party doesn't have more than 50% of the seats, it will undoubtedly try to form a coalition with another party so that combined, they have over 50% and can get legislation passed. Then you have a government that at least 50% of the people voted for some part of. And the Prime Minister, as head of government, knows they can't ignore their coalition partners and will have to give in to them on some things. Or how can he or she expect their support again?

Germany is a nice example. It has been doing this ever since it got its new constitution in 1949 (you may remember there was some unpleasantness with some guy called Hitler that left them in a complete mess, and it wasn't until 4 years after the end of that that the Allies could leave them to it with a new and better constitution). It uses MMP to elect the Bundestag and the result of that is Germany has had coalition governments ever since 1949, because no party ever clearly wins. It certainly hasn't caused the most powerful country in Europe any harm, especially as by now Germans all know how it works.

For example, I recall that after the German general election of 2005, it took about 5 weeks before the parties agreed on a coalition and we knew that Angela Merkel would be Bundeskanzler (Prime Minister), the president appointed her and she took up office. No problem - that's quicker than the USA, where the President doesn't take office until 2 months after the election.

All fine and dandy but the USA doesn't have a parliamentary system. A consequence of having one is that you don't have separation of the executive and legislature, which the US constitution was specifically written to provide for. Unless the USA bites the bullet and totally rewrites the constitution, it's stuck with FPTP.

Because most people aren't political scientists and do not know those criticisms. It is all that they have ever known and do not know some of the other voting systems.

More significantly, the U.S. tends to clump elections together to save money. In most of the country, on November 8, voters will be voting for President, a Senator (in two-thirds of the State), a U.S. Representative, several state-wide officials, a state Senator (in about half of each state), a State representative, judges, a handful of local officials, and five or six ballot issues. This practice makes it difficult if not impossible to use some alternative means like preferential (instant run-off voting) although a handful of cities do use preferential voting for local elections.

Additionally, a significant number of U.S. voters have a concept that they should "vote for the person, not the party." While this concept reflects a misunderstanding of how the legislative process works, this belief on the part of voters is a significant obstacle to going to a system based on some form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.

No need for one.

I will go with a fiscally conservative, socially inclusive, fit, successful two term governor with no scandal in his past or present. I will go with Gary Johnson as the Best and Only Sane choice for president this election.