Still think voting 3rd party or not...

Hell, write-in candidates got 2300 votes in the VA senate race. You think ol' George would like to have those 2300 votes right now?

vote with my heart sounds noble but hardly practical if the worst opponent gets in because of a ringer....i got more sense than that..

Mayo.

500 votes in 2000 means nothing to me.

Especially when I know that Karl Rove stole that election.

Unread Today, 09:16 PM #1
Mayo
Senior Member


Join Date: 02-18-05
Posts: 167

Still think voting 3rd party or not...
voting doesn't matter? Think again!

99% Precincts Reporting
Jim Webb Democrat 1,141,052 (50%)
George Allen (i) Republican 1,138,676 (49%)
Glenda Parker Independent Grassroots 25,512 (1%)


Next time you might want to actually have your vote count and mean something.
Mayo is online now Report Post

Wait...Wait, you honestly think that so many republicans lost their seats because of the third party? Hahahaha. Smart thinkin' dude.

I'll always, always vote Libertarian. When I can vote in '08, (My first presidental election!), i'll be voting Libertarian, unless Hillary runs. If the <Low Road language removed by Art> doesn't, I'll be voting for the real American party. Uh...Libertarian.

Since there are enough voters to make a difference either way then it matters.

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No. If you're assured that the others will all change their votes to Bush, then you can vote third party knowing Bush will still win. If you're not assured they will all change their votes to Bush, then they probably won't, and your vote for Bush won't help him win.

The only way you help Bush win is if the race is off by 1, and that is incredibly improbable. Even if your projected gain from a Republican win is $10 million, based on the low probability of your vote making a difference, it's not worth your gas money to go vote at all. Voting in large national elections or statewide races in most large states is merely an exercise in civic irrationality.

But I'm a human being and irrationality and emotion are my rights. So I use that to vote Libertarian, since rationally I shouldn't vote at all.

I just hope everone thinking that it is a wise choice to "send a message" to a particular candidate or a party by either voting 3rd party or staying home is happy they got their message out when a Democrat contolled House and a Democrat controlled Senate send another gun ban through to the desk of (God forbid) a Democrat President. :banghead:

So whose vote mattered in Florida? Point out one person who should have voted differently based on knowledge of the future.

No one person made a difference, so why should you as a 3rd-party voter change your vote? It only makes sense if there's a good probability that a bloc of other third-party voters will change their votes as well. But you have no assurance of that, and they use the same rationale to vote the same way they did originally. You're stuck even if the voters know the original outcome.

The only way Bush loses is if ~500 voters act irrationally based on knowledge of the future and change their votes from Nader to Gore without any assurance that anyone else will do the same.

If you get a voting bloc -- say, churchgoers -- and keep them ignorant of the gory details of strategic voting and game theory and all that, then you have a shot at manipulating close elections by swaying that voting bloc, because it acts as a sort of group mind, a sort of single voter with 100 or 1000 or 100,000 or 10,000,000 votes.

I love how all of the Repubs get so bent out of shape over third party votes because they say it's throwing away a vote to the Democrats. These geniuses fail to acknowledge that in a number of states, in order for a third party to get on the ballot statewide, they need a certain percentage of signatures...the number of signatures being dependant on the number of votes that the winning candidate received in the election prior or some such other scheme.

Here, voting your conscience does matter if you don't want a Repub or a Dem in charge until they start being pro-freedom instead of pro-party. I'd say if taking 250,000 votes or so away from either of them gets an ion dependant on the ballot with "x" less signatures next election, the vote is not wasted, it's doing precisely what it's designed to do in a system where the odds are stacked against emerging parties.

But the Republicans get mad about third-party votes. They rail on and on about how no one should vote for anyone but their party because of how bad one party is, and how ineffective a vote for the third would be, but they just can't seem to sell people on why one should vote for their party...no, they go on and on and on and on about how everyone should vote against the other...which coincidentally happens to bring votes to the party of their favor. Such individuals aren't pro-freedom, they're pro-party line.

The Republicans didn't lose because of the voters, they lost because the party has gone to crap. It's not my responsibility as a voter to make sure a Republican wins, it’s their responsibility to give the people what they want...they didn't do that, so they lose. Luckily, we did get a more moderate Democratic bunch coming in with wins this time around; the Republicans have 2 years to turn it around or we're going to see a huge majority of Democrats in office in 2008.

The majority of the Dems that took house seats from Republicans are in fact Conservative Dems. The sad irony is that this demonstration of pro-conservative values and beliefs is what shifted power to a strongly liberal controlled Democtrat party making a San Fransicko Lefty the Speaker of the House.

Zen21Tao gets the prize.

The whole of USA politics is centerist.
The Dems are conservative.
The Reps are token 'insert flavor of the month'.

We deserve a third choice, a brave new choice.

Mayo.

Banging your pixel head against a pixel wall won't help.

You might just get a pixel nose bleed.

real name, in all honesty I mean no disrespect, but what kind of weird world do you live in where the Dems are conservative?

tcgeol. No disrespect taken, it's a world where I pay immense attention to politics, where my wife is a lobbyist in five states, where she has to be in DC tonight, where I care and notice that no matter what they say they are all the same.
And so I deduce,, the dems are conservative to get votes, and the Reps vice versa... as much as they can get away with.

Mayo, you're right, voting for a third party is just as ineffectual -- and even more statistically unlikely to influence the election -- as voting for one of the two major parties. However, I like to think that because many fewer people vote third-party, my one LP vote makes more of a differential impact on the major parties' after-action campaign strategists than a Dem. or Rep. vote would. Since I'm already acting irrationally by wasting time voting in a federal election, I might as well make a statement.

I'm starting to think the most effective thing a voter can do in a large election is to write in a candidate, because a fair number of people look at those crazy write-in candidates' names... it doesn't matter whether it's out of curiosity or boredom. Writing in Cthulhu or Doctor Baltar or something like that might make after-action political strategists think twice, which one more LP or Dem or Rep vote will not do.

Until then, fact is a D or R IS GOING TO WIN!

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That's a real convenient position to have when you're in favor of the status quo.

See, you say not to vote for a third party because a third-party can't win. Third parties cannot win simply because not enough people vote for them. The larger the majority of people that vote for an R or a D, the harder it is for an I or an L or a whatever to get on the ballot next election in some states, ensuring that they'll never win, not now, not in 10 years, unless the entire voting populace has some collective Zen moment where they all just decide to vote for an I or an L that's not even on the ballot. Politics is a momentum game, the more non-mainstream votes, the more votes they'll get in the future if they can keep the momentum and the easier it will be in many cases for them to get on the ballot next election...and being that our major parties are weathervanes, the more wind that gets blown into the sales of competing platforms, the more they'll both tend to centralize around some aspects of said platform in order to appear more 'moderate' or whatever the buzz-word of the day happens to be, which means third-party votes, if utilized, can influence change in a major party. But we wouldn't know, because we're not supposed to throw our vote away...

Fact is--like it or not---that a vote for a 3rd party candidate(now) equates to the same as me writing myself in on the ballot--both amount to 0 in the end and you are left as a spectator to watch what you already knew---D or R.

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You seem to be laboring under the delusion that those who voted for a 3rd party candidate actually care one way or the other that an R or a D got elected.