There are vote chess matches in clubs
Why can't team chess be a thing?
Sort:
Yes, but are those correspondance? Would be nice to have one live. I thought about teammates voting, but then I preferred having one person with the final say. Think of the drama it would create.
So this is actually taking place right now in the Team Blitz Event to outstanding success. It's exactly what I wanted, works even better than I had ever imagined. What a dream! 
I wonder if someone borrowed my idea, possibly not since I'm sure these things can take months to organize and make sure everything goes right but who knows.
My idea said 3 players each side but now that I see it with 2 players, this way probably makes a lot more sense. 3 players might get a bit too chaotic.
The reason why it works so well is this: A big part of why chess has never been as successful as other large competitive events like association football or tennis is not that people don't like it or care about it, it's that they can't see what's going on with the players. They just see two players and a position. You look at a regular sport and you can see everything going on. You see the action taking place. When you look at a high level chess match, noone has a clue. Competent high-level commentators help a lot, but noone can really tell what's going on in the minds of the players, what they're trying to do, which is clear as daylight in sports like football. You also get expressions and frustrations, emotions of the players - okay maybe we get a little emotion in chess but 99.9% of time it's pokerface. And you get to see how they're weighing up the various moves in real time. Getting excited at believing they're winning, what they're scared of, etc.
It's also the human aspect of it. The drama and interactions that take place. The drama has always been a big pull in the world of chess, the high reputations, the young pretenders vs the old guard, the Americans vs Soviets, the feuds, the dodging title defending, etc., do you really think anyone cares about the actual chess? (jk).
It's a party atmosphere. When humans meet up they don't just stare at things for hours, they chat and mingle, about anything they can think of, even if it's not important, just because it's nice to chat, it's nice to exchange ideas, to share experiences, it's the most natural thing in the world, it's an instinct built into our DNA. Chess meanwhile has this "it took him 3 hours to pass the table salt" jokes types of reputation.
A major reason for why it was never done before (to my knowledge) is the technology requirements made it difficult. You can't just put all the players in the same room or they would try to eavesdrop the other side. How would the clock work and the move-making process, computers solve all that instantly.
I guess the only potential flaw is that if the stakes were raised drastically and they were to become really professional and serious, it might change a lot for the worse. For example it might turn out that the objectively best way to play it would be to focus almost all efforts on personal calculations and speak the bare minimum, for example as a blunder check before the move or to convey endgame knowledge or an attacking idea, without also stating the variations, so the viewer is back kind of in the dark a bit more again. I don't know if this is the case.
Also a significant ratings gap - as Levy himself stated today - he wondered if he was merely just a distraction to Nakamura, again I don't know. This was invitation-only I believe and they want to entertain and put on a bit of a show. If they were to be all super serious about it, it might be different. Players would also have to divide up systems and repertoires. At a really professional level of seriousness they might even divide up endgames, etc.
But definitely a great event and I hope they keep doing them, I hope they go on forever.
It has been done before. They are usually called consultation matches. I've read about others but I can't remember who the players were. One I do remember is Morphy's Opera game where Morphy took on a team of two noblemen. Despite being outnumbered Morphy was able to win and win with style! https://www.chess.com/terms/opera-game-chess
It cant be because say team a is playing team b and team a had player c and d, team b had players e and f. Now say it is team A's turn and team b has set a trap. Player c sees the trap but player d doesn't. However, because players e and f are still there, they cannot discuss their tactics and moves and that will lead to a dilemma. It will have to become online chess, and that would be similar to our vote chess games. Now say you want to have 2 rooms so the players can discuss their moves without being overheard with arbiters in each room, a computer to play the moves and another arbiter to tell the moves to the other team. Now assuming the arbiters don't want to help one team(they can easily tell the opponents that the other team played another move that was different from their actual move to cheat the opponents or help one team and no one will know because there are no spectators etc.), in time trouble it will be very hard to play and also the arbiters will now have to run around and this will be very frantic and unorganized and will definitely end unfairly and attract a lot of complaints.
I can not understand why we can't have team chess - ACTUAL team chess, not a bunch of 1v1 games that are totally independent of each other.
Let's say 1 person is the captain, he (or she) is sitting down and makes all the moves. He has one team mate on his left and one on his right who can alert him to threats or give him ideas or say he knows a particular opening or endgame well and what he should do. Imagine the fun it would be, and the audience could see the one thing that makes chess a difficult spectator sport to appreciate - what is going in the minds of the players.
Explain why we can't do that.