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Originally Posted by August
And with more parties you get even higher percentages of disenfranchised voters. I can't see any value in electing a president who only gets a third or quarter of the vote.
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Actually in parlimentary systems like we have here in Canada, we don't elect our leaders directly; rather, we elect members of the party they head and the party that wins the most seats becomes the government. Its leader then, who is also an elected member of parliment and won his seat in the same election, becomes Prime Minister. The party with the second most seats becomes the official opposition. That's just an aside.
I would say that because we have more than 2 parties that hold seats in government, that voter disenfranchisement is less of an issue because the ruling party often needs votes from the other parties in order to get a sufficient majority to pass legislation. This forces some degree of consenus since the legislation must have a broad enough appeal (beyond that of the majority party) to garner sufficient votes from its own members and attract enough from 1 or more other parties. Therefore even if the party you voted for isn't in power, they aren't neutered by the lack of it but still have some influence, especially if the elected party tries to pass radical legislation which can lead to the other parties putting their differences aside to defeat the government in a vote of no confidence (this doesn't happen often because of the risk of antagonizing the voters who elected the majority government).