I voted for the Libertarian candidate in 2016, because if that party had gotten 5% or more of the vote they would automatically qualify for major party status and get on the ballot without needing petitions and so forth. So, in the interest of diversity, I voted Libertarian. My vote therefore, in some sense, counted more than if I had voted for Hillary or Trump, because one vote is marginally more significant as part of 5% than as part of 100%.
The Libertarians didn’t get 5%, Hillary won my state, and Trump is President. But I didn’t waste my vote in any sense, IMO.
One person’s vote doesn’t count any more or less no matter who or what you vote for.
Yep, and I am thankful he did so because it outed him as completely bat guano. I was even planning on voting for him before he did that. Thankfully, he pulled his stupid stunt before he was elected, and we were spared from having a totally insane president for the rest of our lives.
See you agree with me. There is hope yet. Changing how people vote would change the election results. I’m ok with losing if we get the candidate that most people think is best for the country rather then the candidate that most people think is least worst.
Think of it this way. People on this board laud rich people who vote to raise taxes on the rich since it makes them a good person but hate rich people who vote to keep their taxes the same. We want people to vote in the national interest and not their personal interest. I’m vote the same way I vote for the candidate to make the country better (national interest) not the person that will allow me to pwn the losing side (personal interest).
The last comment wasn’t about the EC but every single race. Voting for a Dem senator in wyoming is wasting your vote. I know dems in Wyoming that don’t bother to go to the polls since they are just going to lose. I know republicans in California who gave up voting years ago because they don’t get to choose who their Congressman is. Getting these disgruntled voters back to the polls is a good thing for democracy and the only way I can see that happening is if its not a horse race and people are encouraged to vote for who they think is best.
The last two posts have touched on the thought that voters often feel that their vote “doesn’t matter.” Maybe we should be moving the issues of having better elections and better representation up a little higher on the national priority lists.
I may have just violated the new rules. For that, I apologize and will drop the subject if I have done so.
Using the broader definition of swing voter that includes those who swing not between D and R but between sitting home or third party (functionally same thing) and the party they lean to, who are to a large degree people who don’t really give a shit and are neither involved or paying much attention, “better elections and better representation” is not the issue.
I’m usually a swing voter, and often vote a split ticket. In 2016, Trump and Hillary were both unacceptable, so I voted third party. In 2020, Trump remains unacceptable, and the Dems seem unable to nominate someone I can support, so it’s likely to be third party again.
I’m not sure what the principle behind that is if you’ll vote for Democrats who voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq. Both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden voted pro-Iraq-war, for example, so it’s not like we’re looking at one or two obscure Democrats who would never be a contender for president.
I’m a swinger. I see Trump as the third party candidate swing voters have been hoping for for so long. The Democrats have shown that they will turn our legal system into a kangaroo court to get rid of him. The Republicans are part of the same Uniparty as the Democrats, but they appear to be willing to let him serve out his term, and his next one if the voters elect him again. So in 2020 I am voting for all Republicans, to prevent removal via Shampeachment. Prior to the 2016 election I was Democrat / third party, actually thinking Republicans were assigned a role by the Uniparty that was so out of touch, I would never vote Republican. I think this board is almost exclusively anti-Trump because it attracts those looking for an “authoritative” source (the “straightdope”), and in politics, the “authoritative” source is the mainstream media. The mainstream media, being part of the same establishment as the Uniparty, has been bombarding the public with anti-Trump propaganda 24/7 for years now, brainwashing anyone who gets all of their news from the mainstream media to be anti-Trump. Posters I debate on this board will often attack the sources I cite rather than the content of those citations, even if it is a verifiable fact like “a Ukranian court declared Ukranian interference in the 2016 US election”, and express that they refuse to even consider the content independent of any bias it might have. I have been saying they thus have “news blinders” on. And I suggest they remove those blinders.
Why on earth would registering D mean you give up your right to vote in any, let alone every, election on the ballot?
Registering D doesn’t mean you have to vote D. You continue to have your right to vote for anyone of any party in every single election on the ballot.
All you’re doing by not registering in a party, if you’re in a state in which that matters, is giving up your right to vote in any primary at all.
– I used to be a swing voter, years ago. I’m still a swing voter, on the very local level: county clerk, highway superintendent, town board. (Often these offices are unopposed anyway, around here; and sometimes the same candidate is running on both the R and D lines, as well as others. NY is weird, you can do that here.) I’m not currently a swing voter for any office beyond county level; or at least, the D’s would have to run somebody like an avowed white supremacist to make me one, which isn’t currently likely to happen. But in a clearcut race I’ll often vote for the D candidate on another line (see NY is weird: the votes that any one candidate gets on, say, the D, Working Families, and Green lines; or on the R and Conservative lines; or sometimes on stranger and even apparently contradictory combinations of lines, are all added together and all count. So in NY you can vote third party and have it count in practice – as long as your third party vote is for a candidate also running as D or R.)
My rural California region is solidly (R) which I ain’t. (See all the red counties on a Calif. map.) I don’t abstain from voting just because I know my neighbors will re-elect (R) legislators. My vote isn’t wasted. Which is worse: 1) voting for what you want and not getting it, or 2) voting for what you DON’T want but getting it? Which is the wasted vote?
California will NOT give its delegates to an (R) presidential candidate this year. (Note that Calif. was a red state till (R) governator Arnie was through with us.) Most states award all their delegates to whichever ticket wins even a small plurality - and yes, this disenfranchises the rest. Which is why the rigged EC must go, replaced by a simple nationwide plurality of non-suppressed voters. But that won’t happen, absent some major catastrophe. Small and red states have too much to lose; and candidates would have to work harder, campaigning everywhere, not only in swing states. Can’t have that.
a) There is no such thing as time travel.
b) Donald Trump did not come into existence in 2015.
c) No one gave two craps about Donald’s politics previous to 2015.
d) If they had, he was registered as a Democrat and giving money to Hillary Clinton so the mass media should have been amiable to him.
e) And even if d is not true, the legal system certainly wouldn’t have cared.
Do you think that there are any methods in existence for looking at the world pre-2015?
We do not have any true “swing voters” on the Dope, in the sense of being indicative of swing voters generally in any way, shape, or form.
True ‘swing voters’ are largely people who don’t follow politics, and barely follow the news. Because they’re not paying much attention, they’re hard to reach, and their decisions of who to vote for will likely be made on sketchy grounds.
Dopers aren’t like that. If you’re a Doper and you’re genuinely undecided, chances are you know way more about the candidates and the issues, and you’ve thought way more about them, than 100 typical ‘swing voters’ put together.
Yes, and where I live the primary is the election. I’ve mentioned this before but in every single election I have ever participated in, every single candidate that wins our county, state, and even electoral votes is Republican.
With two exceptions: the supervisor of elections used to be a Democrat (no more). And then Nikki Fried won her statewide election by a hair, so we see her face on the gas pumps. But for everything county level and below, only the Republicans have won since…
Well, my wonderful supervisor of elections has removed the records of elections predating 2018. But I looked previously and my county has voted solid red for every single partisan election for something like, twenty years straight (supervisor of elections excepted, until 2016).
I’m a “swinger” on the not-(R) side, having little preference. I’m not inclined toward some but I have till California primary day to finalize my as-yet-undecided vote. I’ve not bothered to absorb details of the 14 survivors and their issues. More will be gone soon.
No, CA voted for Dems presidents solidly since 1992, Arnie was elected 2003. Arnie was the last GOP Governor, but he wasnt very “red”, being socially liberal, and fiscally conservative. We need more like him, and less like the present president.
Well, FOX is part of the Mainstream media, and it has been 99% pro trump since he was Nominated.
And I suppose you could say that a "“a Ukranian (sic) court declared Ukranian interference in the 2016 US election” since: "*A court in Ukraine has ruled that officials in the country violated the law by revealing, during the 2016 presidential election in the United States, details of suspected illegal payments to Paul Manafort.
In 2016, while Mr. Manafort was chairman of the Trump campaign, anti-corruption prosecutors in Ukraine disclosed that a pro-Russian political party had earmarked payments for Mr. Manafort from an illegal slush fund. Mr. Manafort resigned from the campaign a week later.
The court’s ruling that what the prosecutors did was illegal comes as the Ukrainian government, which is deeply reliant on the United States for financial and military aid, has sought to distance itself from matters related to the special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential race.*"
In other words the “meddling” was disclosing that the trump campaign was getting illegal bribes from *Russian *supporters in the Ukraine.
That’s not anywhere near the same as the Russian’s wide social media attacks on Hillary and their attempts to fix the elections by hacking into voting machines- which as far as we know, were unsuccessful.
There are other allegations:
Mr. Trump has also repeatedly claimed – including in an interview Friday morning on “Fox and Friends” – that a Democratic National Committee server is being hidden in Ukraine. “They have the server, right, from the DNC,” Mr. Trump said.Independent experts say that is unequivocally a conspiracy theory. According to Mr. Trump’s own former national security adviser Thomas Bossert, it has been “totally debunked.” Extensive evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence has shown that Russia was the key actor in social media meddling and the hacking of Democratic servers in the 2016 campaign.
And there is Alexandra Chalupa who is a Ukrainian-American lawyer who has served as a paid consultant and sometime-employee of the DNC. Note that "…-American: part. She reportedly had something to do with the Ukraine disclosing the illegal bribes to the trump campaign. However, she was born in the USA of Ukrainian parents.
Pretty much, they all did, and Biden said he was personally promised by the Shrub that America would invade, that it was just a threat. He was lied to, as was the rest of Congress.
IIRC, you typically vote Republican, but did not like Trump. You also were not crazy about Hillary. You hoped beyond hope for a world were neither would win.
But you made a tactical choice that because Hillary would win your state anyways (and if she didn’t, that wasn’t something that would cause you to cry into your beer), you could vote for something that you felt had a positive purpose. Nothing wrong with that.
When I said “wasted vote” I was talking about a scenario where we have Smith, Jones, and Carter. Carter is only polling at 3% while Smith and Jones are neck and neck at 45-44. You hate Jones, are lukewarm on Smith, but absolutely love Carter.
In that scenario, it makes much better sense to vote Smith instead of Carter to keep Jones out. If you vote for Carter anyways, you cannot blame Jones voters when you knew the rules upfront.