I'll vote for whomever I please, you fuckers!

The BBQ Pit
1

From this GD thread about Nader:

You know, fuck you all. I’m really sick and tired of being told that I need to vote for one of two presidential candidates selected by private organizations, and if I don’t I’m deluded/ignorant/stupid/etc. I’ll damned well vote for whomever I feel would make the best president, and if you feel like that’s an insufficient motivation to get me to the polls, then that’s your prerogative I guess, but how dare you suggest that I bear responsibility for the candidate you want to win losing. What about that Republican over there? Doesn’t he bear some responsibility as well?

Why didn’t your candidate make compromises towards the Republican platform, surely that would have been the smart, realistic thing to do. Any candidate who doesn’t do so is blinded to reality. Well, maybe it’s that he truly believes in his cause, but the people who vote Republican instead of moderate Democrat get no such charity.

So fuck you, nay-sayers. You get your rocks off playing what-if games to illustrate why it’s 3rd party voters’ faults your candidate didn’t get elected, while ignoring any number of other what-ifs that are just as valid if not more so, but you feel better about yourself when you spit on those who are “supposed” to be on your side than you do looking at other reasons you might have gotten less votes than you’d have liked. The focus and obsession on one small factor in the election of 2000, for example, borders on pathological.

And you know what? If you want to get down to the practicalities of it, I could vote for Santa Claus and it wouldn’t make one lick of difference. My state is going Democrat, and we’ve got so few votes that it’s pretty inconsequential anyway. If voting for Nader (or whomever, this rant isn’t really about him, but third party candidates in general) means I’m deluded, than so does voting for anybody! Why the fuck should I get out of bed on election day, when the outcome of my state is likely a foregone conclusion, and even if that ends up not being the case, our three electoral college votes are not likely to sway the election one way or the other.

The whole fucking point of Democracy is to let your voice be heard. If you compromise your voice by voting for someone you don’t want to be elected, then you compromise Democracy.

I voted Nader in 2000. I voted Kerry in 2004. I’ll be equally content with Obama or Clinton this year (was hoping I’d get to vote for Edwards, but Obama will be a nice 2nd option, with Clinton an acceptable third option). In each case, I voted for the person I’d most like to see as president from the choices available to me. If you’ve ever done otherwise, and think that somehow your voice will be heard, or that you as an individual are somehow gaming the system to ultimately get what you want, you’re the one who’s deluded.

Again, this is not a thread about Nader. It’s about how we exercise our voice in this country. It’s about the things I’m responsible for as a citizen and the things I’m not responsible for. And if I don’t want a candidate to be president, you’d better believe that it’s not my fault that the candidate didn’t get my vote, as if I owed it to him/her and withholding it is some kind of silly game I’m playing.

2

Go ahead and vote for whomever you want to.

The issue was never that you couldn’t vote for your guy, even if he was going to lose big. No, the issue was that a large (in fact, a majority) of voters failed to gain their preference because a relatively small number of voters opted for a guy that, all things being equal, would have won had the votes not gone to the other person. It is on these things that the fate of a nation turns.

But you’re right. I still consider it wasting votes, but I can’t take any substantive issue with your OP.

3

my bolding

But aren’t there scads of other “reasons” why, in that specific case, Gore might have gotten fewer votes than he wanted/needed? Maybe he should have harped less about the environment. Maybe he should have worked harder on being charismatic. Maybe he should have adjusted his stance on an issue or two that might have brought in more votes. Why is it automatically the fault of the minority for not voting for a candidate, as opposed to the fault of that candidate for not garnering enough votes? And why is it one particular minority? Why didn’t more moderate voters vote for Gore? It must be their fault; I’m sure there were a lot more moderate voters who voted for Bush but could have voted for Gore than there were Nader voters who would have voted for Gore otherwise.

My point is just that there’s all sorts of correlation for all sorts of things in an election. To pick one thing out and blame your loss on it just doesn’t make sense. And further, to insinuate that people doing what they are explicitly told to do under their form of government are doing something wrong is despicable and anti-American (or at least anti-Democratic). Oh noes! The terrorists have won!

(Doors, I realize I’m not actually arguing with you here, BTW)

4

The issue is also that, by voting for his/her guy, s/he acted irrationally, by helping contribute to the defeat of somebody who matched her policy preferences better than the winning candidate.

5

Based on that line of reasoning, there never should be any more than two candidates; as any number larger than two reduces to two as voters rally behind the most popular person who isn’t the person they hate the most.

I guess that’s a viable position to take if you believe that we should limit elections to Democrats and Republicans only, which I do not.

6

It’s also a viable position to take if you’re more interested in who winds up president than whether or not you get to wear the “I voted for Nader” pin.

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I’m not talking about what should or shouldn’t happen. I’m saying that under the current electoral system operating in the US, voting for a third party candidate is generally not a rational act. If you want to make a third party candidacy viable in the US, change the electoral rules.

8

It depends on your motivation. If you are concerned only with the final outcome then you need to vote more strategically, and not necessarily for your preferred candidate. If you are voting more on principle then you vote for who you like.

Personally the latter is my philosophy, but I understand the former.

9

A voice of support for the OP. My sentiments exactly.

All I have to add is that I don’t understand why third parties are tolerated at the level they are. They should either be banned in favor of a de jure two-party system (not my ideal), or the system should be reformed to allow a broader range of interests to represent us instead of just-right-of-center and rather-further-to-the-right-of-center.

10

This is exactly right. In 2000, does anybody really think that Nader voters said to themselves “Hey, if I vote for my guy and Gore loses, I’ll be perfectly happy with Bush”? No, they said “Hey, Gore’s got it wrapped up, so I’ll vote my conscience and be happy with it”. Imagine their surprise when Bush won.

Voting for a 3rd party is only viable when the election isn’t expected to be close. Any other time the third party acts as a spoiler. That’s how it is.

With regard to viable third parties, the reason why there aren’t any is because any issue of value to the general public is co-opted by the major parties. The only thing left is the extremist, tinfoil-hat brigades and their single-issue lunacy, and the public never supports those people or their causes in any measurable way.

11

I think the question of ‘rational’ is one that’s certainly open for debate. I’ve been listening to people on the radio talking about which candidate seems “presidential,” whatever the heck that means. It certainly doesn’t seem like a ‘rational’ reason to vote for someone, when there are more concrete things like voting record, position on issues, etc etc. How much of what happens at the polls is rational, and why single this one thing out?

I do agree with you and Dr. Drake, though, that the current system guarantees that a Democrat or Republican will become president, and it should be changed to either forbid non party-nominated candidates from running, or change the rules to make running as a non Democrat or Republican an actual viable option.

12

In New York, the third parties can run the same candidates as the big two, and votes for any count for the same. So I could, in theory, vote for George Bush on the Libertarian ticket.

13

I’d only vote 3rd party if the two candidates were equally bad to me and I didn’t want to feel guilty staying home on election day.

My mom voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. I still give her a (good-natured) hard time about it.

14

The “first past the post” system used in US presidential elections means that voters who really prefer third-party candidates should not waste their vote on their preferred candidate, but instead vote for the leading candidate that they least dislike – if they have a preference between the two leading candidates.

But that really isn’t the whole story. If they are supporting a third-party candidate, presumably they also want to change a system which is so biased in favour of the two main parties. A vote for Nader, or whoever, as well as being a vote for the candidate is also a symbolic gesture that you want to break the two-party hegemony. And the only way that the two-party hegemony will change if there is enough support for a third party (or parties). Neither of the two main parties will ever change a system which suits them so well.

But Ralph Nader isn’t the person who’s going to change the two-party system. The last person who changed it was Abraham Lincoln, and Nader is no Lincoln. Not even Teddy Roosevelt could change things, though he tried pretty hard.

15

I think if you honestly think Ralph Nader would make a good president, you’re already nuts.

16

Well to be realistic voting at all is not rational, because the chances of your vote making a difference are pretty much zero.

17

Well, the way I’m defining rational is that a rational action is an action that leads to an optimal result according to the actor. Specifically, I’m talking about bounded rationality here…which is to say that an action is rational if it leads to the best result possible under the circumstances.

For instance, in this election, if your goal is to support a black president, for instance, it would be rational for you to vote for Barack Obama. It would be less rational to vote for Alan Keyes. (It would be even less so to vote for John McCain).

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Actually, your chances are pretty good, 100% in fact. Why? Follow me on this: the first vote has as much value as the winning vote, because without the first vote there can’t be the 10th, 1000th, or 1000000th vote. Therefore, if the candidate wins by one vote, the first vote was the winning vote. So was the second, third, etc. This doesn’t change in a landslide, either.

19

This is absolutely right, is nearly always true, and has been recognized for a long time. In first-past-the-post majority rule elections, the number of candidates almost always converges on two. Duverger’s Law is more than just a good idea.

20

Some probably did, but not all of them. My thought process was more like “The Green Party has some good ideas, and I can’t vote for either of these two fuckers.”