Those problems are the reason why in Germany a party has to get more than 5% of the votes to get into the parliament. We learned from the Weimar Republic
But there are other democratic countries that don't have that rule, so... well...
There are the problems, for example in Italy or Israel. They have many parties in parliament so they have to make coalitions of many parties. Thats often a problem because most of those coalitions don't last very long.
As somebody who doesn't live in the USA I'm very interested in this thread, I always wondered what you people think about that system. In Germany there are five or sometimes six parties to vote (governments mostly consist of coalitions of 2 parties) and they often have extremely different opinions.
For me it is even very difficult to see (although I'm very interested in US-politics, it is one of the reasons why I have subscribed to the TIME-Magazine) what's the main difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
Also it seems that in the US the persons who can be elected play a bigger role than in Germany.
It's very interesting, I hope this discussion will go on for a while (if you like), I'm listening.