I definitely agree. The article appears to be painting a very dark picture that 91% don't want the candidates.
Where as this is just stating the obvious of what happens in every country that first puts forward a leader of a party that is contending to win the overall election.
It is quite an interesting time. My liberal friends are all irked because Bernie got hosed by the DNC. My conservative friends are irked because the RNC did not do more to stop Trump. Talk about a role reversal with the party of the people and the party of the establishment.
Personally, I see so many problems with both candidates that it makes me sick that I have to vote for the least worst one.
You don't actually have to vote for the least worst one... I recommend looking to third party candidates. The libertarian party has two pretty solid lineup and polls third at the moment (like 11% or something this election cycle).
That being said, you can also protest vote by putting in "Edward Snowden" or something.
Honestly, I find it horrifying people feel the need to vote for the "least worst option". You're essentially electing a temporary dictator (potentially at least), please don't vote for someone you dislike. Even if you dislike one less than the other, you still dislike them...
Try not to let fear influence you when selecting a leader. A leader needs to guide and protect the group, not be the least bad member of the group.
> Honestly, I find it horrifying people feel the need to vote for the "least worst option".
I find it disconcerting that one could use such hyperbolic language when voting for the "least worst" option is clearly the rational thing to do when there are direct, personal stakes from the *outcome. The ramifications to minorities by electing a very conservative Republican, or a pretend-Conservative who is a not-pretend racist like Trump, are quite significant. By doing anything, by action or inaction, to put Trump in the White House, there is a substantial risk of reduced voting access for minority voters. For poor voters, there is a substantial risk of losing the social safety net. For women, a likely increase in barriers to reproductive health.
No, you don't have to vote for the least-bad option. But we all know that a third-party candidate is not going to win the election. You're expressing at horror that people with skin in the game, where the stakes are quite high (or seem to be), are unwilling to make a political and philosophical stand at the expense of their own best interests. Until there is some level of voting system reform, we're likely stuck with first-past-the-post system that encourages two-party rule.
Of course I think you should vote for a third-party candidate if you want to. It's your vote! Maybe it'll lead to funding for their campaign next time. But I take great umbrage with the disgust and horror shown to people acting pragmatically because of what a third-party vote may lead to for them.
> But we all know that a third-party candidate is not going to win the election.
A third party doesn't actually don't need to win. If a candidate does not receive a majority in the electoral college I believe the house / congress decides[1]. This would also pretty much destroy both parties - they will have to compromise and come closer to the middle.
Basically, if a third party can get even 15% of the vote it would open the door for another candidate.
> A third party doesn't actually don't need to win. If a candidate does not receive a majority in the electoral college I believe the house / congress decides[1].
(1) a third party is unlikely, in failing to win, to get even a single electoral vote, much less be instrumental in denying the leading major-party candidate a majority.
(2) If no candidate gets an electoral majority for the Presidency, the House elects a President on a one-vote per state basis (and if they don't do it by a specified time, the Vice President becomes President); if no candidate gets an electoral majority for the Vice Presidency, the Senate elects a Vice President.
> This would also pretty much destroy both parties - they will have to compromise and come closer to the middle.
Why would it destroy both major parties -- particularly the one that still wins the Presidency in that scenario?
> Basically, if a third party can get even 15% of the vote it would open the door for another candidate.
No, it wouldn't. We know that, because its happened, not that many elections ago (H. Ross Perot, 18.9% in 1992.)
Fine, swap an impossible reality for a slightly-less-impossible reality. I feel just as confident saying "a third-party will not keep a candidate from winning the electoral college" as I do saying "a third-party candidate will not win the election." Third-party candidates do not siphon votes equally from the two major parties, they typically just make it easier for one to beat the other. I think it more likely that a third-party candidate could get as much as 30% of the popular vote without winning a single electoral vote.
No. But to someone who argues otherwise, I'd imagine there would be no dissuading them of that.
Elections aren't thought experiments. The parable humorously expresses what so many third-party evangelists express: that the candidates are basically equivalent to each other, or equally bad. I find that position distastefully incorrect, or at the very least naively spoken from a position of privilege.
Elections aren't thought experiments, the results will have tangible and long-lasting results. I'm not personally willing to sacrifice some of the issues I perceive to be at stake this election on the altar of a third-party candidate who cannot win. If you are, then great! It's your vote, do with it as you please. It's the moral smugness that usually accompanies the position that bothers me, as if voting for a viable candidate is either irrational or barely moral.
You say "no". but spend the rest of your reply contradicting that statement, with the rationale that "elections matter". Unless you really think Clinton or Trump isn't a lesser evil, you can see why the "Wrong Lizard" parable applies directly to this case.
Predictable, and predicted. Read it how you want. The parable isn't a fair comparison because the candidates are not equivalent, much less equivalently "evil." I strongly believe arguing otherwise is only done from a place of privilege.
Further, the "Wrong Lizard" parable is a parable of collective-created system. I'm an individual acting within in a moment where the reality is already defined, as are all other individual voters. It's problematic to apply collective-level critiques to individual behaviors because what is less sensible at the collective-level is fully sensible at the individual-level.
But, again, see what you want to see. If it makes you feel like you've got the high ground or something it's no skin off my back.
To the sibling who said that voting for a third party accomplishes nothing, that is incorrect. If a third party receives 5% of the overall vote, that party's next presidential candidate becomes eligible to receive about $90M in federal funding for the following election cycle under the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.
HN delays showing the reply link once conversations get to a certain depth, as a way to slow down the conversation and put a damper on flame wars.
Anyway, I don't see what difference federal funding would make. They're still not going to have a chance at winning or meaningfully affecting the policies of the major parties. In the unlikely event they do manage to win, it's basically mathematically guaranteed that they'll just displace one of the other major parties and we'll be back to a two-party system again. This is, of course, what happened in the mid 19th century when the Republican Party displaced the Whigs. There's no way around it in a first-past-the-post system. If you want third parties to be viable (and I sure do!) then you need electoral reform, not protest votes.
Federal funding would help those candidates get national TV ads and in front of more people in general. Then, with the added legitimacy of a 3rd party with that kind of money to splash around, they would likely be included in more prime time debates and other forms of media coverage. The two incumbent parties would also start to pay attention to the newcomer. It isn't a 4 or 8 year fix, but I believe it would be a major step in the right direction for this country.
So they get some attention, and then they either fade out or take over. Either way, we're back where we started. The problem isn't that third parties don't get enough attention, the problem is that the way the electoral system is designed, there can only be two significant parties. You might change the names of those two parties, but that won't really do much.
> They're still not going to have a chance at winning or meaningfully affecting the policies of the major parties.
A third party doesn't actually don't need to win. If a candidate does not receive a majority in the electoral college I believe the house / congress decides[1]. This would also pretty much destroy both parties - they will have to compromise and come closer to the middle.
The odds of that happening are still basically negligible. And if it did, you'd shake up or destroy the major parties, but then you'd be back to some sort of two-party system pretty much right away, whether with the incumbents or new ones.
The PECF doesn't just blindly give out $90 million dollars; it matches up to $90 million dollars of donations, dollar-for-dollar. The third-party candidate still needs to bring in donations to receive money from the PECF.
That is one aspect of PECF. The other is a grant to the presidential candidate as outlined further down in the page I linked earlier:
PARTY CONVENTION AND GENERAL ELECTION GRANTS
The presidential nominee of each major party may become eligible for a public grant of $20,000,000 plus COLA (over 1974). For 2012, the grant was approximately $91,241,400 for each major party nominee. However, the two major party presidential nominees in 2012 opted out of the public financing program in the general election. Candidates themselves may not raise any other funds to be used for campaigning during the general election period. The general election limit for publicly funded candidates for 2016 is $96,140,600.
To the other comments here saying voting third party is the worst possible option, no, it's not. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. Furthermore, it's putting a two vote differential between evil and a third party candidate that has to be 'undone' by someone willing to vote third party (-1 third party you didn't vote for, +1 for evil). If you are saying you have to choose between two bad candidates, you are implying you would choose a better option if one existed. If you don't think the third party candidate is a better option, that's fine, don't vote third party, but if you think the major party options are evil, the just don't vote. Then at least you aren't voting for evil that needs to be undone by someone willing to vote third party.
I don't like extending the turn-of-phrase "lesser of two evils" to subsequently label each candidate evil. I realize you're just continue with the phrase, but I bristle a little bit at the implication that major-party voters are voting in an evil.
> If you are saying you have to choose between two bad candidates, you are implying you would choose a better option if one existed.
Well there's a word missing here that changes it. People are not typically implying they would choose a better option if one existed; rather, they are typically implying they would choose a different viable candidate if a different viable candidate existed.
> If you don't think the third party candidate is a better option, that's fine, don't vote third party, but if you think the major party options are evil, the just don't vote.
This is again a suggestion I take umbrage to, and one I feel primarily made by those unlikely to feel the level of personal impact from a given election. Both candidates are the same, unless your voting rights are threatened. Both candidates are the same, unless you're reproductive rights are threatened. Both candidates are the same, unless you depend on food stamps to feed your children and yourself.
Elections have real stakes. It's all well-and-good to take a philosophical stance with a third-party, but that third-party candidate isn't going to win. It's both a self-fulfilling prophecy to say so, and a pragmatic acknowledgement of present-day reality. So, when one of two people will win, and your vote does matter (which isn't a given), then the rational thing to do is vote for the person who you feel will do you the most good or least harm. And everyone that turns their nose up at you for not tilting against windmills can learn to take it easy.
Your argument basically revolves around two points. One is that if you feel one candidate represents your views, then you need to vote for that candidate. That's absolutely, 100% fine and what you should do! I am speaking to the people who don't find their views fit with either candidate, or the negatives outweigh the positives so much, that they feel they are not given a real choice, which is not really true. The second point you are trying to make is saying that you should only vote for a viable candidate, which is like saying you should only cheer for a sports team that has a viable chance of winning a championship. That's ridiculous, and just passive aggressive bullying to get people to feel they need to vote for a candidate you support. People should be free to vote with their hearts for whomever they feel best represents their interests. If the candidate they vote for loses, fine, that's the democratic process, and has a 50% chance of happening anyways if you vote for a 'viable' candidate. If someone feels they have to vote for the candidate who is going to win, that's something more akin to countries like Venezuela or Iran, where there are elections, but we all know how much choice people are actually given in those places.
> One is that if you feel one candidate represents your views, then you need to vote for that candidate.
That is not what I said, though I don't necessarily disagree. I am making the argument that voting is a self-interested exercise one way or the other; even voting for the "greater good" is an exercise in personal self-interest. So if you evaluate the two candidates who have any chance of winning and find a significant difference in how you and your peers' lives will be affected, then it's rational to vote for one of those candidates even if your views align better to a non-viable third-party candidate.
> The second point you are trying to make is saying that you should only vote for a viable candidate
No, that is again not what I am saying or have said. You're inferring something I'm not implying. Everyone should vote how they want to vote. What I don't like is the philosophical grandstanding about how if one doesn't really like either candidate that they should not vote or vote third-party, or that voting third-party or abstaining is some symbol of moral strength or "rightness."
It's easy to laud the nobility of voting third party or abstaining, futility of outcome or not, when you view the outcome of either viable candidate as basically equivalent. But they aren't equivalent, especially to certain subgroups of people. You specifically encouraged people not to vote for "evil candidates"; if you meant the word "evil" literally then fine, ignore this. But I don't think you did, and therefore I found your suggestion quite distasteful.
That's an interesting concept and I'd extend it by saying that one vote for least-worst requires the efforts of two third-party voters to compensate; one just to cancel-out and one to compensate for the lost 'potential' of the original voter.
Adult life is an unending series of choosing the "least worst option."
I'd like to do whatever I want with my time. But I have to pay for things, and I'm not independently wealthy, so I seek the least worst job I can get.
I'd like to live in a perfect house in a perfect neighborhood, but I haven't found that yet so I chose to buy the least worst house/neighborhood combo I could find and afford.
I'd like to have no commute, but I need to be in the office to work, so I have to find the least worst way to get too and from work.
I'd like to be in shape, but because I don't have time to play outside all day (my preferred form of exercise), I have to pursue concentrated exercise sessions. I try to find the least worst way to work out enough to maintain the least worst level of fitness.
Now, you might say that's a limiting and negative way to look at things like jobs, homes, exercise, etc. To which I would say it's also a silly way to look at elections.
>Honestly, I find it horrifying people feel the need to vote for the "least worst option".
I think this is highly dependent on "how bad" the two mainstream options are. There are plenty people who think there is a legitimate concern that a Trump presidency could lead to nuclear war or some other kind of national disaster. If you believe this is a real possibility it comes much easier to empathize with voting for the "least bad option".
TL;DR I dislike Regan, but in a Regan vs Hitler election I would vote for Regan rather than a 3rd party I was actually more aligned with to try to ensure Hitler did not rise to power.
Voting for a third party is pointless. You might as well just stay home if you're going to do that. You might feel better about voting libertarian or writing in Snowden, but it doesn't actually do anything. You're voting as if the system worked differently than it does. It's about as useful and productive as removing all the free() calls from your C code because you think that C really should have garbage collection.
It's not very well known, but if a candidate gets at least 5% of the popular vote then their party gets access to government funding for the next election. 5% is still a pretty tall order (Libertarian party got around 1% in 2012), but it's in the realm of plausibility.
The fact that it's based on the popular vote is great because the Electoral College doesn't get in way. Interestingly, if you live in a state that isn't a swing state, voting third party is possibly more meaningful than voting R or D. For example, if you live in California, voting for Clinton is unnecessary and voting for Trump is pointless, but voting for Stein or Johnson could actually have a real effect.
Utterly false. If the expectation is the actual election of a third party candiate, then sure that is unrealistic given how the two party system actively supresses third party participation. But voting third party contributes to long term objectives of increasing ballot access, funding, visibility, media attention, and decreasing the two-party share of the vote which thereby decreases the legitimacy of two-party outcomes. These in turn can then pressure other politicians across all branches of government to ensact more inclusive electoral reform.
> You don't actually have to vote for the least worst one... I recommend looking to third party candidates.
For any individual voter, under most scenarios that end up existing at the time of casting a ballot on election day in the electoral system like that of the US, while any single vote is unlikely to have an effect on the outcome, the most likely nonzero effect of a third party vote vs. voting for the least disfavored major candidate is to elect the most disfavored major party candidate.
If you don't like the major candidate, its certainly makes sense to promote a third party candidate so that the calculus on election day is different than normal and it becomes rational for people to vote for a third party candidate (at which point, that "third-party" will have become, for the purpose of the election, one of the two major parties, displacing one of the previous ones for which it will no longer be rational to vote, for the same reason it normally is not for a third party), but it makes less sense to actually vote for a third-party candidate when that transformation of circumstances has not taken place before the election.
I plan on holding my nose voting for whoever I think can beat Trump. If you want somewhere to channel your political energies, channel it into getting Instant Runoff Voting in your state. Or some other non-plurality based voting system.
We really need some way where people can vote conscience without spoiling.
If you want your vote to have any chance of affecting the outcome you have to pick the dem or the gop because one of them will win. Nobody else can afford to win. A lot has to change before our votes really mean anything, and nobody in power has incentive to make those changes.
> Honestly, I find it horrifying people feel the need to vote for the "least worst option". You're essentially electing a temporary dictator (potentially at least), please don't vote for someone you dislike. Even if you dislike one less than the other, you still dislike them...
But that's exactly what you have to do in a first past the post system, and especially with the Electoral college. A vote for Jill Stein (assuming Jill Stein doesn't win) that would have otherwise gone to Hillary Clinton if the voter had chosen the 'least worst option' is in effect a vote against Clinton.
With IRV your advice would be good, but that's not how the US system works.
Please for God's sake don't do this. (Unless you actually believe that Trump and Clinton are equally bad.) With a two-party system, staying home or voting a third-party/write-in is functionally identical to giving half a vote to the candidate who represents you the least.
Yes, this is fucked up, and yes, it needs to change. Voting for Ed Snowden will not change it.
Based on past performance, voting will not change it, period. You either have to run for office yourself, donate millions in campaign funding, or work your way up the hierarchy in one of the two major parties.
Given that the maximum involvement most people desire in politics is visiting polling stations to vote twice a year, or maybe volunteering to help campaign for one specific candidate, my advice is to just vote for whomever would make you feel good as you exit the polls.
If you would otherwise stay home, you can still make a meaningful difference by voting for a third party, because there are percentage-of-the-total-vote thresholds (varying by state) that impact whether that party has to overcome a crippling barrier to entry (again) for the next election.
The third-party candidate is not going to win. But you can help prevent that party from being required to collect 50000 signatures (costing them $100000) to get on the ballot next time. If you hate both major candidates, this election is not really your fight, anyway. You can, however, vote for "better luck next time" by making a third party seem more like a serious contender.
Vote for the candidate that most closely reflects your desires. As long as the two major parties can always manipulate voters into "lesser of two evils" and choose between "douche vs. turd sandwich" or "stupid vs. evil", they will never have any incentive to change tactics. Vote for a single-issue party if you support their position. Otherwise, vote Libertarian, Green, or Constitution if you have the option.
Check your state's ballot access laws. It may be a better option to strategically not vote at all for a particular office, such as governor, to reduce the signature burden for ballot access in the next election.
I honestly believe Clinton is worst than Trump (I also believe Trump is a patsy put in by Clinton to lose the GOP--but it's backfiring) -- He's too dumb to be president, but she will not do any of the new things she's promised the Bernie camp.. My conscience says to vote Jill Stein, but if not her, then I'm voting Trump -- if I can't save the country by voting for someone who really gives a shit - then I'd rather destroy my old party the democrats and build a new party of progressives in it's stead -- the only way to change the left is to battle it out amongst ourselves first and kickout the establishment. I will not even vote down-ticket for establishment players like Pelosi or Harry Reid - if they backed CLinton before June they're definitely on my shit list.
I very much agree with you. Voting for one of the republicrat candidates might have short term gains (e.g., possibility of having Trump as president, if you dislike him), neither party, nor our elected representatives, reflects many issues that people say they care about in nationals and local polls.
I see voting for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson as being a long term play.
People aren't upset that the DNC was against Bernie, they're upset that they were against Bernie while telling the public they were neutral to solicit donations. I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds like felony wire fraud to me.
> it makes me sick that I have to vote for the least worst one.
Perhaps you should vote for someone else then.
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more
rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had
the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing
anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people
are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the
lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a
democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously
obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've
all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the
government they've voted in more or less approximates to
the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford,
"the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Yes I think that this election was just completely dominated by marketing/advertising. There seems to be no substance behind it at all. I don't think people really had the opportunity to hear about Bernie Sanders and other more worthy candidates.
As a foreigner not living in the US (but following the process nevertheless) I hardly even heard about Bernie Sanders until he lost the candidacy to Hillary Clinton - After that, I did a bit of research on him and he actually seemed like the perfect candidate to solve the US's current problems - If I could, I would definitely have voted for him.
Maybe it was different inside the US, but from outside, almost no one would even recognize the name "Bernie Sanders" because he just wasn't given any attention in the media.
If the media doesn't give you a balanced description of what your options are, how can you even vote?
This is downright corruption - Just as wrong as the kind that happens China, only a lot more sophisticated.
I just had a small debate about this with some friends of mine. Let's imagine you live in a battleground state, and for the sake of argument, let's also assume that you're in one of the 48 states that are "winner take all" in that they assign all of their electoral college votes to the overall popular vote winner in that state.
Say that state is Ohio. In 2012, the popular vote in Ohio was as follows (Source: Politico):
B. Obama 50.1%
M. Romney 48.2%
G. Johnson 0.9%
J. Stein 0.3%
Let's say you're much more aligned with the Green Party platform. Why wouldn't you vote for Jill Stein?
The answer is because your vote would likely otherwise go to Barack Obama, as the next closest candidate. So you're taking a vote away from Obama and putting it toward a candidate that has no chance of winning.
If enough people do this, the second place candidate would win, in this case Mitt Romney. As a Green supporter, this would likely be the worst case scenario result. And yet, unintuitive as it is, your vote contributed to the candidate on the opposite side winning.
"But if enough people voted Green, they would win," some cry. OK. Historically speaking, the Greens have averaged around this result... likely no more than 3% in any given state election. Do you really think that they're going to multiply their votes by several orders of magnitude by election day?
This isn't the case in every electoral system; for example, in a Parliamentary system such as Canada's, you vote for your local MP, who runs on the basis of a riding, for which there are usually several within a city. The party that wins the most MP seats gets to form a government (PM, etc.) So the election becomes a much more local affair, rather than being a winner-take-all battle among the entire province, and results in practice in a multi-party system. Unfortunately, that's just not how US presidential elections work. The ridings are the size of an entire state, so your vote has less of an impact.
The problem with strategic voting arguments are several:
1) There is a clear value to voting Green in terms of building the party. The more people vote Green, the more visible the success of the party, the better they do in future elections. Not all of what happens in an election need be about winning the current contest.
2) The idea of a linear political spectrum with candidates neatly arranged from 'good' to 'worse' to 'bad' is bunkum. In particular Libertarians are an obvious divergence from this model (and often emphasize this), and this strategic voting argument makes zero sense in their case. Greens also are generally quite different from Democrats ideologically (notably on war); the idea that a Democrat is a 'better compromise' is vulgar to many.
3) If a party wants your votes, generally they should take up the positions you favor, not refuse to countenance them on the belief that duty requires you to vote for them.
4) Mitt Romney is looking pretty good right now, even compared to Clinton.
2) Answering first to set up some points. Political beliefs can't be neatly arranged on a linear spectrum, but certainly far fewer people who might really prefer Green are going to instead settle for Trump. I agree that it's less clear about the Libertarian party, as they seem to draw a bit from "both ends of the spectrum", but I think it's safe to say that the Green party isn't spoiling things for the GOP to the same extent that they are for the Dems.
1) I agree that there is value in building strong third parties, but that value comes at the cost of the risk of the spoiler effect as I described. If presidential elections happened every year, or if there was a bigger push from the bottom (State and Legislative elections) to elect more third parties, then maybe the risk would be worth it to establish the base, but that's not the case, and a President can do a lot of damage in 4 years.
3) I think both Trump and Bernie have demonstrated a more viable way to accomplish that this election. Both have moved the Overton Window in a direction that the entrenched party candidates were unwilling to prior to this election. For example, Bernie pushed the Dem platform adopt "raise the minimum wage to $12, or maybe more", when they weren't strongly pushing for it prior.
4) I think that 2016 Romney sounds pretty good, but pandering 2012 Romney still sounds pretty awful. Similarly 2000 McCain sounds great in retrospect, but 2008 or even 2016 McCain sounds pretty awful as well.
I object to the whole term 'spoiler'. These people are not obliged to vote for you if they believe you to be the devil incarnate. For many the alternative to voting Democrat would be to not vote. Is this, also, unacceptable? Nay, any who doesn't vote to stop the dread spectre of Trump and advance the rule of Clinton is a traitor?
My feeling on Clinton is that she, and many of the other people in government, are horrifying murderers and traitors. Obama has two main roles: fundraise for the Democrats and sell weapons to Saudi Arabia. Clinton has been paid millions of dollars by Goldman Sachs, a company that had a major hand in constructing the housing bubble whose bursting blanked $24 trillion in wealth from America.
I am just giving you a bare illustration of my disagreements with Clinton. I held my nose and voted for Sanders in the primary. I probably won't even vote for Jill Stein. There is no way for someone like me to even begin to express my antipathy to the current form of American political process and system of government.
To many people like me, you are asking them to vote for Al Capone because John Wayne Gacy is worse.
Perhaps you think people like me don't matter. But the truth is there are probably a lot of people like me. And there are probably a lot of people of a similar bent on the right (though with different stories for why we should hate and fear the same elites). And this political system doesn't reflect our desires, and, as you're arguing in this thread, by design it cannot; it seems lunatic to me to attempt to engage with it.
So, I won't be voting Clinton, nor Trump. But I am not a spoiler; the barrel is fully rotten.
I am the one that originally asked the question, and my views are very much in line with yours. I left the US three years ago, largely out of utter contempt for the American political establishment, and what I consider to be genocidal foreign policy compelled by war profiteering.
I am normally quite chatty about this and other political topics online, but tonight I'm out of energy -- so thank you for summing up how I feel so well!
I'm not trying to argue that you should never vote third party. If you are so ideologically opposed to the Democratic and Republican platforms that you truly see no difference between them in terms of the success of their governance, then sure, vote for a third party.
I don't personally think that way, and I believe there would be a huge difference between a Clinton and a Trump presidency, so I will vote strategically because I want to have an impact on the real election happening here, that between the two front-runners.
> 1) There is a clear value to voting Green in terms of building the party. The more people vote Green, the more visible the success of the party, the better they do in future elections. Not all of what happens in an election need be about winning the current contest.
That makes sense in the abstract. In concrete reality, Trump is going to do his best to persecute hundreds of thousands of Americans, notably Hispanics and Arabs. (I don't say "Muslims" because I don't think his policies, or the people carrying them out, will recognize a functional distinction.) Shall we tell those people as they're being persecuted and deported that their suffering is okay, because they're contributing to the Greens possibly having a chance at winning in 20 years?
I don't think we can reasonably ask that of people.
This is exactly the same thing we hear every election. You can't climb a hill if you don't ever try to go up.
Of course I don't believe in elections so this whole debate is academic to me. In a world with ALEC and WPP, elections have nothing to do with governance.
I'm Indian, though not Muslim, but certainly frequently mistaken as such by racists. One of my close friends is a Muslim with three daughters she fears for daily. I have much to fear for personally.
But the idea that we have nothing to fear except Trump is bullshit. Trump didn't bring us here. Bush, Clinton and Obama did. Fifteen years of terror and violence in the Mideast did. Actually sixty years if you want.
I fought hard to stop the Iraq war that Clinton voted for. She has nothing to be afraid of personally. I've been afraid too long.
You have unstated assumptions embedded in your post.
You are not taking a vote away from Obama when you vote for Stein. It is far more likely that Obama is actually taking votes away from Stein, as Green party supporters vote strategically, because their 2nd choice is better than their 3rd or 4th choice.
Until such time as any US state implements a ranked-choice voting system, you have no way of knowing whether the candidate receiving the vote is actually someone's first choice, or a strategic vote for the second-to-last choice.
First-past-the-post voting essentially means that the 2 major parties are always stealing away almost all the votes that would have otherwise been cast for lesser parties. So a vote for Stein is actually "refusing to let Democrats steal your Green vote". You can't steal it away from the Democrats, because it wasn't theirs to begin with.
This strategy makes sense in battleground states but what about in the opposite case (say hawaii (very D) or wyoming (very R)) - I'd argue that by voting for the third party candidate is the better option as you are unlikely to change the outcome of the election one way or the other - but you reduce the mandate of the winner that you are less aligned with, and by marginally improving the showing of the third party, make it more likely that mainstream candidates will want to address issues of concern to a newly visible voting block?
I would agree that it matters less in non-battleground states, and could have the effects mentioned. This, in general, causes one of the two parties to absorb some of the causes put forward by the third party, which is one of the reasons the system tends to centralize toward two parties.
To a degree, this has already happened. Some planks of Clinton's platform came directly from Sanders (I'm thinking of revamping college tuition and enhancing other social safety nets specifically).
Sanders is not a "third party", but a Democratic candidate. The effect unsuccessful major party campaigns have an on the major party despite failing to secure the nomination is a different issue than the effect of third parties on major parties.
> This isn't the case in every electoral system; for example, in a Parliamentary system such as Canada's, you vote for your local MP, who runs on the basis of a riding, for which there are usually several within a city. The party that wins the most MP seats gets to form a government (PM, etc.) So the election becomes a much more local affair, rather than being a winner-take-all battle among the entire province, and results in practice in a multi-party system.
Parliamentary systems with FPTP also tend toward two-party systems locally, though there is somewhat more variation nationally sometimes. (The US also had some variation nationally, especially before the Missouri Farmer-Labor Party joined the national Democratic Party.)
IF you want multiparty elections locally as well as nationally -- if you want more than two meaningful choices when you go into the ballot box -- you need something better than FPTP as a voting system (IRV with single-seat constituencies is like the smallest and least meaningful step in a positive direction, but STV with multiseat constituencies does better.)
Agreed, and I would love to move to a more proportional voting system. Ontario had a vote a while back to move to mixed-member proportional but the folks behind it failed to explain it well enough for people to understand, in my opinion, so it failed.
> As a Green supporter, this would likely be the worst case scenario result.
Confined to a single election. I have a theory that lately we're seeing the longer-term consequences of limiting agency to large sections of the population.
The problem has more to do with the mechanics of plurality voting than presidential vs parliamentary systems. Parliamentary systems can and are subject to the same winner take all mechanics. The scenario you outline would best be remedied via a ranked voting method such as IRV or approval voting. The one thing I would incorporate from some parliamentary systems into the US system is proportional representation. PR + IRV = more equitable representation of non-gamified votes.
537 votes. That was the official difference between Bush and Gore in Florida, out of almost 6 million votes cast. Nearly 100,000 people voted for Nader.
These Nader supporters of course had every right to vote how they wanted, but the prevailing argument at the time by Nader was that there was essentially no difference between Gore and Bush and it was time to send a message to the "establishment."
However you feel about Bush, I think history makes it plain that 1) there was likely a huge difference between a Bush and a potential Gore presidency, and 2) while it may be nice to simply send a message with your vote, we should remember that 0.0000895% of the electorate of a single state can determine the outcome.
Right. I've engaged in a couple of such discussions on reddit. To say I'm unhappy with the two major candidates would be a huge understatement.
But no matter how strong our emotions are about such things, should be extremely clear-headed about what our vote means. And, the point I try to hammer home, that we each need to take full responsibility for the result of our vote.
If you want to vote to 'let the world burn', as quite a few Bernie supporters are talking, so be it.
If you want to vote to 'send a message', so be it.
If things go very badly after November, then you're not allowed to say "my vote didn't really matter" or "I had no choice but to vote the way I did."
Own your vote; make it, and accept responsibility for your portion of the outcome.
537 out of 100,000 Nader voters in 2000 changed the world, and not in a good way, in my strongly held opinion at least.
Because in the U.S. electoral system, voting outside of the two primary candidates selected by the system is effectively a wasted vote, and if there is one candidate you especially don't want, it is usually more effective to vote against them rather than for a candidate who cannot win under the system in place.
A third-party vote is wasted in the context of the current election. It is definitely not wasted in terms of ballot access and public credibility for the subsequent elections.
If you don't expect to die before the next election, it is never a waste to vote for the option closest to what you actually want.
If you are always voting between your worst choice and your second-worst choice, it may be wiser to reconsider strategic voting altogether, and just pick what you want every time.
>
A third-party vote is wasted in the context of the current election. It is definitely not wasted in terms of ballot access and public credibility for the subsequent elections.
I think there is a pair of words reversed here: it is not definitely wasted in terms of ballot access and public credibility for subsequent elections (that is, it is possible for it to have some impact on those things), but its most likely also wasted for those purposes, so "definitely not" is not accurate.
I don't understand why you are being downvoted. You are pointing out the biggest issue with the current political system in the US. It's de-facto a two party system. We could fix this by making it either a parliamentary system or changing the voting method to approval voting. With approval voting we wouldn't even need a primary and neither Trump nor Hilary would be anywhere near the Whitehouse, since they both had negative approval ratings during the primary.
Of all of the candidates only two have a chance of winning. If I vote for someone other than those two, the one that I think is the worst may get elected.
This perspective is self-fulfilling. Vote for your best candidate, Dr. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are real candidates, and could win, just like Bernie Sanders (which no one expected).
We need to force the two parties to loosen their grip on the political machine in the US. The only way we do that is by supporting third party candidates.
If you want to vote Green, go convince a conservative to vote Libertarian. I did this just last week in PA, a conservative that I don't agree with is completely upset about Trump and is going to vote for Gary Johnson.
> We need to force the two parties to loosen their grip on the political machine in the US. The only way we do that is by supporting third party candidates.
May I suggest that you guys explore elections reform as an option to get fresh faces on the political stage and rejuvenate the whole political process?
What better way to do that then make the two primary parties afraid of losing ground to third parties?
In a race where two third party candidates can siphon votes off the two primary parties, it's finally in the interests of the main parties to move towards something like Ranked Choice.
Unless you can massively convince everyone to do vote for their actual best candidate, it's also very pragmatic.
From experience from other countries, the way shifts that allow a third party/candidate break a "duopoly" happen is slowly -- they incresingly get 5, 10, 15% of the vote, until a momentum builds and people start (rightly) feeling than voting for them doesn't just waste their vote and lets their least favorite of the 2 major candidates elected.
This is the year to do it. There is enough general dissatisfaction with the two parties that there is an opening for both the Green and Libertarian Parties to actually do something that's never been done before.
Which instead of spoiling one major party (Perot and Nader), they would spoil both.
Your wasting your vote if you don't use it to vote your mind.
The perspective may well be self-fulfilling, but it's a perspective held by nearly all voters, so it will self-fulfill whether or not I personally believe it.
Yes, if the entire electorate would just wake up and realize they can vote for anyone they want, then it would no longer be a two-party system. And if a benevolent immortal dictator spontaneously materialized in the White House, we wouldn't need to mess about with this democracy nonsense at all anymore. The second one is not substantially less likely to happen than the first, so it's pointless to consider.
The odds of you vote changing that is tiny. IMO, convincing others to vote for a 3rd party is a bad idea, but voting for them is just as 'meaningless' as any other vote in terms of changing who win. However, the power of voting is in the message not just who wins.
Defacto third party's scare the primary party's so they are quick to gain the talking points as soon as those party gain any traction. Most recently Libertarian message was somewhat co opted by Tea Party Republicans. Though in a very mutated form that for example ignored their drug stance.
Here's a suggestion, for you and everyone suggesting you don't vote: Get over it.
(Content intended for voters in a US-style FPTP system. Mileage in IRV and other systems may vary.)
No one will see your vote. The structure of elections is not such that you can state your ideals. The question is about your preference for the actual outcome of the contest.
In programming terms, you're not being asked to return the largest integer; you're given a choice of two integers, and asked to return the larger. It doesn't matter if neither one looks objectively "large"-- refusing to return anything will not help this algorithm generate larger numbers.
Maybe it's a stupid algorithm, but that's not relevant, either.
To stay HN-neutral I'll leave this generic, though it really isn't: Regardless of your feelings about the candidates in this election in an objective sense, you should have a strong dispreference for one candidate under the other. In a proper decision theory, that should translate into a strong relative preference for the other candidate to be the actual winner of the contest.
That doesn't mean you support them absolutely, or morally. It just means you're voting in line with rather than against your true preference for outcome.
And that should translate into strong support in the voting booth, though of course that doesn't and shouldn't have to translate into strong support in public opinion.
If you don't vote for the candidate you strongly relatively prefer because your absolute preference for them is low -- you don't want to send a message that "this candidate is objectively good" -- you are using a different protocol than the election, and what will be received is "the relative preference for this candidate is fairly low". What you should expect is for the election to perceive that you support your dispreferred candidate significantly more than you actually do.
There's another option (though scantily mentioned and likely unpopular): not voting at all. At least then you won't bare any responsible for putting a Trump or Clinton in the White House.
We really ought to shift to a rank based voting system where you can list your first choice, second choice, third etc. (Which Jill Stein wants to implement btw.) This system would reflect the average of preferences and the best candidates would emerge.
There's no way Trump would have secured the Republican nomination in a rank based voting system because he is so polarizing. Instead they'd probably have Kasich, who was everyone's second best.
> Talk about a role reversal with the party of the people and the party of the establishment
I follow you up to here. The Democratic party has always been for centralized control of policy decisions.
> My conservative friends are irked because the RNC did not do more to stop Trump.
Mine don't really care about the party leadership. They are irked at the other primary voters more than the party leaders. Rubio, Paul, and Cruz were Tea Party candidates, so considering them establishment and voting for Trump screams ignorance more than anything.
Only in theory. No recent PM hasn't also been an MP (last one was 1830–1903, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil).
I cannot imagine in this day and age that someone would be selected as PM without also being an MP. Now, I can imagine them losing their MP seat during their term as PM and staying on.
The Tories and Labour know that the way the PM is selected isn't exactly Democratic, and they know that if they were to select someone who hasn't had a single vote that would be politically disastrous and likely result in a change to the way PMs are even selected.
The UK's whole political system only works because of mass voter apathy and ignorance (see the AV vote for examples).
Unless this is an argument for literally direct democracy why do we need to vote separately for the prime minister? Do you want to vote for every minister individually? There are more than a hundred so it may take a while. Instead, we elect a representative, who groups together with like-minded representatives to form a government and run the country. Keep it simple.
I think in UK politics talking about apathy and ignorance is often a nice way to talk about other people's ignorance of your better opinions, and their apathy for your better ideas.
> Unless this is an argument for literally direct democracy why do we need to vote separately for the prime minister? Do you want to vote for every minister individually? There are more than a hundred so it may take a while.
This is a textbook example of a "False Dilemma"-type fallacy. Either don't vote for the PM or vote for "more than a hundred" ministers. Those aren't the only two options and you know that.
A vote for a PM could, implicitly, be a vote for the ministers that the PM would select. You select the PM, the PM selects their ministers and cabinet, that gives the public more Democratic power.
> I think in UK politics talking about apathy and ignorance is often a nice way to talk about other people's ignorance of your better opinions, and their apathy for your better ideas.
Three quarters of people 'cannot name their local MP'[0].
Well I didn't actually present any dilemma - you're imagining that. I just asked if you thought we should also vote for all other ministers to see how many votes you thought we should have. I didn't say those were the only two options.
I'm in favour of regularly electing a representative and then letting them get on with it. I favour simplicity and I think too many votes on different issues gets in the way of a coherent government.
If people can't name their MP then that's their business. Perhaps they're focusing their time and energy on something they believe is more important. Maybe they're curing cancer while we argue politics. Who knows.
> A vote for a PM could, implicitly, be a vote for the ministers that the PM would select. You select the PM, the PM selects their ministers and cabinet, that gives the public more Democratic power.
According to the polls, it's more like 60-65%. Only somewhat fewer than 70-80% would be willing to vote for either, and less than half of those who would vote for either candidate are voting in support of that candidate, rather than in disgust with the other one.
The picture is dark. Voters are choosing between dynastic plutocracy and a carnival barker.
91% are not engaged supporters of the two candidates that were nominated. Each nominee can claim no more than 9% of the population as having demonstrated engagement with their campaign.
In addition to that it should be pointed out that the number of engaged voters who voted for a different candidate for nomination is almost as large as the number of engaged voters who voted for the winning nominee.
There is a fundamental problem with the nominating process. Neither nominee has solid ground to claim that they represent the preferences of anything besides a small fraction of the electorate.
It's a problem in the current context of how U.S. elections work, where those 91% of the people feel "forced" into voting one of these two parties or candidates, even though 50% of them are registered Independent.
If the U.S. electoral system easily allowed for other parties to exist and thrive (such as with a proportional representation voting system for Congress, which drastically increases how well people are represented in Congress, and could lead to much less "gridlock") then this wouldn't be an issue. Because those 91% of the people could easily ignore the Democratic and Republican candidates if they were terrible (which seems to be the case this year), and just vote for another party's candidate in the general election.
And they could very much still do that. The problem is there's both a legal and unofficial collusion between the two main parties to control the elections in various ways (such as making the rules for who gets to debate), and between them and the media, who normally completely ignore other candidates, and don't treat them nearly as fairly, so their chances greatly diminish.
There are a lot of things that could be done to fix this. But people need to support politicians willing to overhaul this system.
Larry Lessig (on who the DNC changed the rules mid-game so he doesn't get to make his case in a debate) had some great ideas [1], and so does the Green Party [2].
Jill Stein also supports ranked choice voting, and I believe multi-winner ranked choice voting, too, which is a form of proportional representation [3].
Unfortunately, you're not going to hear about all of these ideas from a media that has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and you'd have to rely heavily on the Internet and social media to grow this movement (and do it before Google/Facebook/Twitter start ramping up their censorship to help their favorite candidates, as we've already started seeing them do).
> Because those 91% of the people could easily ignore the Democratic and Republican candidates if they were terrible (which seems to be the case this year), and just vote for another party's candidate in the general election.
Israel had proportional voting with a 1% electoral threshold (given there are 120 seats in the Knesset it's almost the natural threshold). They eventually raised the threshold more and more (3.25% now I think) because of the hyper-fragmentation which meant niche parties holding the coalition hostage.
The degree to which a given electoral system represents voter preferences is highly election-specific. People are also usually not polled on their detailed preferences so it's hard to empirically determine which one is most likely to maximize the representation of voter preferences in a given country.
Also the complexity of optimal voting strategies across electoral systems is different. An argument can be made that the simplest is the best.
Say last year in Poland the mainstream consensus was that there's going to be a big coalition of all the parties against the biggest one. But some of the minority parties under-performed while the big one overperfomed giving the big one majority rule with just 37.58% of votes. If you'd redo the elections even the same week you'd probably end up with a much different result.
Where as this is just stating the obvious of what happens in every country that first puts forward a leader of a party that is contending to win the overall election.