I like the idea by itself, Wayne, but we need to separate the existence of parties from what they actually represent: power.

In effect, parties are not the illness (the problem) but the symptoms (the outcomes).

In the USA, parties are indeed a real problem because there are two that have super powers and many others that are weaklings. We are stuck and we look at what is bad about being stuck. Instead of seeing the system and fixing it, we look at the products of the system and focus on how bad parties are, forgetting that the foundation is the voting system.

Looking at nations with multiple parties, it turns out that each party is starting to exist in a format that fits their own political ideology. That should not be a problem therefore. Conservatives should adore an extreme hierarchy of power; progressives should have a big tent. Green parties should drive clean cars -- you get the drift.

In the USA, we have two parties and they are not alike in their behaviors, but they will try to steal the other's popular perception (such as 'big tent' that Conservatives like to embrace while the Democrats are the real big tent of diversity, and the Democrats trying to steal being tough on crime while the Conservatives are much tougher).

Since we have just two real parties here, we apply our view on both our parties on all parties we may consider in our mind. We find an example that seem to fit and extrapolate it to all parties. This is all very normal behavior, but we end up wasting energy on the symptoms.

As I see it, we focus on parties because we believe we can't change the foundation of our voting system (which is not true).