The problem is that if he overplays his hand and the Dems pick up more Senate seats in 2008 – and if I’m counting the list of 2008 seats up for election correctly, the Republicans are defending 21 against the Democrats who are defending only 12 – he’s going to pay for it when they no longer need to put up with his demands.
Your ultimate goal when voting should be getting your political agenda enacted. If given the choice between these candidates:
a) aligns with you on 75% of the issues, 49% chance of being elected
b) aligns with you on 25% of the issues, 49% chance of being elected
c) aligns with you on 95+% of the issues but only has 2% chance of winning
what do you do? This is the political reality in many states. I suppose that if one party or the other doesn’t field a viable candidate, that’s one thing, but the close races we’re seeing don’t reflect that.
Voting is not simply an intellectual exercise- there are real consequences for ceding the election to your ideological opponents rather than supporting someone that isn’t as staunch an ally as you’d like. Of course, in my experience, independent voters do tend toward being those with little stake in the election- people who can absorb a tax increase, who don’t rely on government programs as a rule, and who are generally not in the military.
The fallacy in this argument is that it treats A, B, and C as fixed options, when in reality they are dynamic (i.e. if A loses enough votes to C to tip an election, A will be strongly motivated to shift positions to increase that agreement level to 80% or so next time around).
The question is which way will they shift. When people voted for Nader instead of Gore in 2000 did the democratic party say whoa we better start leaning more to the left because we are loosing people that way. No. They went more to the center.
Oi dipshit, who the fuck made you God? Who are you to tell someone they shouldn’t stand?
How did you know that the majority in the election would not support her?
Or are only Democrats and Republicans allowed to stand?
For a democracy to function, people must be prepared to stand for election. If you don’t like them, vote for someone else.
The options may be dynamic over the course of multiple elections, but static over the course of a single election. Knowing how someone’s position might change for the next election doesn’t help me decide how to vote in this election.
Forgive me if I sound rube-ish, but why hasn’t runoff voting (of some sort) been implemented nation-wide for all offices? It must have been conceived of ages ago. Wouldn’t it fix a lot of these problems (or at least transfer the blame back to the non-voters at runoff time)?
Yes, but I didn’t like Bell. Sure, I liked him more than Perry, but I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils.
Sincerely,
OneCentStamp, who voted for Friedman and has voted for Nader.
Because you can’t implement election procedures nation-wide. Election procedures are controlled state by state. It is suprising that no state has experimented with some of these electoral reforms.
But the likely explanation is that the reforms would require the support of the party in power. And electoral reform would shake things up, and make it less likely that they would retain their lock on power. After all, they’re the majority under the current system, why would they mess up a good thing? When it’s not raining the roof doesn’t leak, and when it rains I can’t fix it anyway.
Are you speaking as a SF resident, where run-off voting is the norm? Is instant run-off voting now practiced up there, in that den of wickedness? 
But like **Lemur **said, all elections are controlled at the state or local level-- even presidential elections. It’s one of the few aspects of federalism still around these days.
I didn’t find Bell sexy & charismatic either, but I voted for him. Perrys’ policies have been bad for the state & Bell had the best chance of defeating him.
Of course, Kinky didn’t help. I’ve been a fan since he toured the state with his Jewboys. His books have gone from amusing to pretty good. Kinky probably did have a sincere wish to be Governor–the publicity that has revived his career was only a bonus. He’s a complicated man & it’s a pity he’ll be remembered as a Republican stooge.
It would have been bad with a 4 way contest, unfortunately it was a 6 way contest.
On my ballot I had
Rick Perry
Chris Bell
James Werner
Kinky Friedman
Carol Strayhorn
James Dillon
I voted for Kinky. Yeah, my vote was wasted. Yeah, all the “anybody but Perry” votes combined could have unseated Perry. Bell and Strayhorn didn’t do anything for me, having a Democrat for Governor just so some pols could crow that their side won didn’t do enough, either.
The vitriol towards third parties can only be explained by an incredible sense of entitlement on the part of the Democrats and (occasionally) Republicans. So your party would have won if the Greens didn’t run. Your party would have won even more crushingly if the Republicans didn’t run. I like how liberal independent voters are treated as if they owe something to the Democratic party. How about you support the values I support, dumbasses? Asking left-liberals to pledge their votes to a centrist party just demonstrates a severe ignorance-- Green (for example) voters aren’t just uppity Democrats. We actually have different political beliefs than you.
Put the three aforementioned US political parties on a continuum: Greens on one end, Republicans on another, and Democrats clumped somewhere a little to the left of the GOP. So step out of the ring, Democrats, and stop spoiling the vote for the Greens. :rolleyes: Grow a fucking pair and support instant runoff voting if you’re so scared of third parties.
If you like the prospect of viable third parties, support Condorcet or approval voting systems, not IRV. IRV doesn’t remove the necessity to vote strategically, but it does introduce the possibility that a winning candidate can be made to lose by giving him more votes.
To the OP, get over it. In the recent election for a Sheriff the incumbent won, narrowly. An independent by the name of Andy Griffith took 9% of the vote, enough to sway the election.
http://www.channel3000.com/politics/8390061/detail.html. Scroll down to Grant County.
I personally was voting for Vesperman, but the fact Griffith was a “Spoiler” in no way undermines his right to run, or anyone’s right to vote for him. The fact that he changed his legal name to Andy Griffith shortly before the election has no bearing on it (I do not have a cite, but it was in the newspapers here). His right to do so. Getting 9% of the vote makes a statement on it’s own, that there are more than a few unhappy people out there. No third party candidates? That is just anti democracy. Suck it up bucko. Oh, your horse didn’t win, tough shit. My horse didn’t win either, and guess what? Tough shit there too, so I suck it up.
If you want a 3rd party candidate who swung the election, it looks as though the GOP lost control of the Senate due to some fellow named Jones in Montana who picked up 10,000 votes on the Libertarian ticket.
I say this with the assumption that more Libertarians would vote Republican than Democrat. Of course, given the disgust many conservatives were feeling at the government growth and spending this past six years, I might be way off on this.
Don’t curse Glenda Parker, curse Jim Webb for being a douchebag. I would have voted for him if I lived in Virginia, because I consider George Allen the worst man in the Senate, but Webb ain’t exactly inspiring. Webb won anyway, so in the end it doesn’t really matter.
Most Libertarians would vote Republican rather than Democrat? What the fuck are you smoking? Would you care to expound on this thought?
This is based on past history – as Jophiel noted, it may no longer be the case given how much the GOP these past few years has shat upon its fiscal-conservative faction while spoiling its big-government religious-right faction rotten.
I actually agree with him, at least in the case of the Libertarians I know. Most of them are all about small government and keeping their guns.