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Originally Posted by mbaha
It is called math. If you have two parties and people are not happy with one party they will have to vote for the other. In this case if people are not happy with the Bush camp they will have to vote for Kerry, wow that was hard. Or they could not vote or waste their vote by writing in Mickey Mouse or some such.
later
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No need for sarcasm here, let's keep it civil. You bring up math, yet that's exactly what makes it so that voting for a third party is a reasonable option, even in such a close election. In all seriousness, are you from America? If not, perhaps that would explain why you don't seem to understand this. There are about 18 battleground states, leaving 32 states where the winner of that state is all but a certain outcome. I'm not going to bother going through each state's individual population, since it would take a lot of time, but to simplify it, 32 of 50 is about 65%. So, using extremely raw math, 182 million people's votes statistically have very little individual worth since a votes individual worth is directly proportional to how close the election is in that person's state. You failed to address my previous questions regarding why those people should vote for one of the two major parties when they have choices
on their ballot for one of the minor party candidates.
As has been pointed out numorous times in this thread, voting is not about being behind the winner - this is not a day at the horse races. But, to use the horse race parallel, when one goes to the races there are various different odds for each horse available. Some people bet on the long shot then, because while the chances are that that person is "throwing away" their money, if that longshot were to win, the payout would be much more significant than if they were to bet on one of the horses that was likely to win. So, people who vote for third parties, despite them having a much smaller chance at winning, are voting for the candidate who has the most promise in their view if he or she does win.
Thankfully, there are other things at work in elections as well. We know that third party candidates rarely win (at least in presidential elections), so while those who vote for them are looking towards a bigger ideological payout, they understand that it will likely not come. So, why do they still vote for them? Besides adhering to the principle that it is important to vote one's conscience, third party voters understand the important role third parties can play in politics. While no third party has won the presidency in quite some time, various arties have had a profound effect on the politics surrounding them. The Prohibition party for example, however flawed we may generally think their ideas are, is responsible for helping to bring prohibition into the spotlight in America, which culminated in an amendment to our constitution. The Green party, while not winning presidential elections, helps to keep the other parties in check by pressuring them to discuss environmental issues. The independant candidacy of Perot, in 1992, brought attention to the national deficit, essentially shaping the entire Clinton presidency.
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Originally Posted by kutulu
Although this election's choices are between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, the fact is that there are big differences between the giant douche and the turd sandwich. It's going to be a really close election too. Although there may be some other candidate that represents more of your views than the turd sandwich does you're not helping yourself out by voting for the third party if the giant douche wins.
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Let me give an actual third party voter perspective to this, again.
I don't think either candidate is a better choice than the other. Other third party voters, while they may think one major party candidate is better than the other, live in states where it doesn't matter statistically whether or not they vote for one of the major candidates (this applies to me as well). So, I'm trying to see how voting for a third party candidate will hurt me. To put it in an extremely simplified manner, if Bush wins the government will keep spending tons of money it doesn't have. If Kerry wins, the government will STILL keep spending money it doesn't have, but on other stuff.
You point to it being a really close election, so I take this to mean that you think it's bad and potentially harming to me to vote for a third party candidate because of this. What if Kerry was up by 12%? That's more than what Clinton won by in both his elections, more than what Bush Sr. won by in 1988, more than what Reagan won by in 1980, and more than what Carter won by in 1976, just to use a few recent examples. Would it then be OK to vote third party, with a spread so large, larger than 5 out of the last 7 elections? Think about that.......
Well that's the spread in Illinois. So, I'm voting my conscience and voting for a third party, regardless of whether or not I feel either of the major candidates is better than the other. Because the only wasted vote in Illinois is a vote for a candidate whom you don't agree with when he's going to win/lose anyway.
Pan.... Another example regarding media coverage. This may be just a very odd mistake, but even the seemingly non-partisan site
http://grayraven.com/ec/ lists only Nader and Cobb in their electoral college calculator. Perhaps it's an honest mistake, but I find it quite odd considering Badnarik is on significantly more ballots than both of them.