I’ve been struggling because I don’t really like the two-party system, but it seems I should vote for Gore because my paramount issue is separation of church and state. I figured voting for Nader or someone else would be “throwing my vote away.” Well, I did some research and determined that my vote for Gore would also be “thrown away” because a Democrat has not gotten a vote from North Carolina’s electors since 1968. I doubt this trend will change this year, so I might as well vote for someone I find less distasteful, and send a message (however small) that I don’t like the current elections system.
That is exactly why I am voting for Harry Browne and Art Olivier, the Libertarian candidates.
The Texas electoral vote will go to Bush. Therefore, I have no worries that, if I vote for someone besides Bush, Al Gore will take the electoral vote. That frees me to vote for someone I actually want as president, rather than the lesser of two evils.
Casting a vote for a third (or fourth, etc.) party is never “throwing your vote away.”
If a third party shows a great deal of strength in elections, generally its platforms become adopted by one of the two major parties. Either the party in power begins to adopt that agenda in order to stay in power by stealing votes from the third party, or the party out of power decides to co-opt the third party in order to make the next election a cinch.
This has happened with nearly every major, ideological third party. Wallace’s message in '68 was slowly stolen by Nixon and the Republicans; the Populists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were absorbed into the Democrats; the Free-Soilers of the mid 19th Century eventually joined with the former Whigs to form the Republican party.
Besides, look at it from the other side. If you don’t like Gore, but vote for him anyways, you’re in effect telling Gore that you like him, and thus give him and the Democrats less reason to change their points of view.
I’d also take opposition to the idea that one party in full power for two years can irrevocably change the government, but that’s a completely different issue.
I agree with John. (Hey, we should form a liberal/conservative tag-team…take our show on the road!) Your concerns, though, Aeryn are why we really need a modified voting system: proportional representation for Congress, preference voting for the presidency. 'Course, for these things we need more than two well-represented parties, so I guess we just keep going round and round…
…than vote for something you don’t want and get it. - Eugene V. Debs
This whole “throwing your vote away” argument is a really weak one - did those who voted for Mondale in '84 throw their vote away? I would much rather cast a vote that shows my dissatisfaction than vote for someone who probably has no intention of coming through with whatever promises s/he made during the campaign.
The Republocrats have put through a lot of legislation that ensures they’re the only real acts in the circus - you have to jump through a buncha hoops in order to have the right not to wear greasepaint and look like a clown. I’m all with Gadarene for proportional representation votes in Congress - but I think maybe the President ought to be chosen from the party/ies that have the most seats - formation of blocs and all that.
Anyway, I’m voting for Nader and I certainly don’t feel I’ll be throwing it away.
Your friendly neighborhood Senator John Edwards is on Gore’s top 3 list for vice president. Picking Edwards would be a great move on Gore’s part, and it just might swing the state. Unlikely perhaps, but certainly not impossible.
Yes, Maeglin, if that happens, I might change my mind. Plus, it would be really cool to know someone who knows the Vice President (a partner at my firm worked with Edwards’ wife).
I actually feel that you’re closer to throwing your vote away by voting for a major party. The chance that your one vote will make the diffeence is negligible, and the major parties don’t especially care how many votes they get - only whether they win. On the other hand, with a third party, you’re making a diffeence, albeit a small one.
But I must vehemently disagree with the proposition put forth by some that we have proportional representation. This is how it is done in Israel and it is an absolute disaster. Everyone and his brother has his own political party over there (there was a party of taxi drivers in a recent election). Nothing much can get done, and anything that does is by corrupt wheeling and dealing between the party leaders.
(Because Israel, of course, is the only place that has proportional representation…:rolleyes:)
And we surely wouldn’t want just anyone to have their own political party, not here in the land of free expression. Oh, wait: pretty much anyone can have their own party in the U.S.; they just probably won’t get on the ballot. Well, we certainly don’t want just anyone to have a chance at political representation. Good Lord, no. That would be complex and chaotic, and not at all given to the good guy-bad guy binary that plays so well in network sound bites.
Explain to me, Izzy, if you please, what’s wrong with the proposition that if a given group gets 10 percent of the congressional vote, they should have 10 percent of the congressional seats? Seems shockingly democratic, to me.
I assume that you are talking about this at a state level, and not a national one. You are not recommending that we vote for all congresspeople on a national at-large basis, right? I really hope not.
The problem with proportional representation (and really, we should start a new thread for this) IMO is the lack of efficiency.
If no group ever gets a majority- or even worse, if the votes are spread such that no two groups together can make a majority- then there’s little chance- or incentive- to accomplish anything.
Look at it this way. If I run the Corrado party, with 80 votes in the House (and the most of any party), in order to get any of my legislation passed I’ll need to do enough horse-trading of support and promises to vote on other bills to get two other factions to support me. Which means that for every piece of legislation I get passed, I have to hold my nose and get two other passed. Not a great deal. Not necessarily worse than our current system (where a liberal Republican may vote for very conservative bills in order for the rest of the party to stand behind him on his own projects), but not really any better; and why radically change the system so that we can have the same problems?
Even worse, I, as the leader of the Corrado party, may choose not to support anything at all, but rather focus my attention upon destroying the bills and projects of the other parties. When it comes election time, I can point out all of the horrors I have stopped, while stating that I couldn’t really get anything accomplished because I didn’t have enough votes (akin to how the Democrats portrayed themselves in '96 and '98).
Izzy has already pointed out that Isreal’s proportional system sucks rocks; I’d add in that Italy’s system likewise screws the pooch. Do you have a successful proportional representation system that you can show us as an example?
I would add to the above that under proportional representation enormous power is concentrated in the hands of party leaders. Because seats are allocated by party, the party leaders get to decide who gets the “safe” positions on the lists. Thus party bigwigs never answer to the voters. The only way they can be defeated is if members of their own parties get fed up with them and overthrow them. Furthermore, the voters have no way to indivdually punish a corrupt member of a party whose general ideology they share. The influence of the voters is significantly lessened under such a system.
Okay, I’ve really got to get back to work, and y’all make valid points which I’ll touch upon in a bit, but I just couldn’t let this go by.
We have a system in which someone can gain office despite the majority of voters voting against them (for example, Bush 36 percent, Gore 34 percent, Nader 16 percent, Buchanan 14 percent), and in which a state could theoretically be represented in Congress by a single party despite that party representing a small plurality of registered voters, and you say the voters’ influence would be lessened under proportional representation?? Heh.
I’ve said that proportional representation is functionally inutile in a two-party system–we’d need a party system which more clearly articulated the various ideologies of the voters.
And John, other countries work quite well with coalition-building. You’ve got good points on efficiency–consider, though, that our current adversarial system is both inefficient and undemocratic. You’re right; this probably should be a separate thread.
I’ve got lots more to say on the subject–there are ways that proportional representation could work quite well on the federal level, Necros (and by the way, what’s so wrong with a house of Congress whose representatives are elected nationally? …Fodder for yet another thread.)–but I do have to go.
Before I respond again, I’d be interested in hearing y’all’s thoughts on the preference voting system I linked to in my earlier post. Thanks.