I hate to invoke the blame thing here, but if there is blame that Gore lost, it’s not our good friend Ralphie who should be chastized. It’s the people who voted for him. But I guess it’s just a liberal penchant for not understanding personal responsibility.
Hey, don’t shoot me for the broad brush!! You lefties set yourselves up for it, and I took the cheap shot.
Truth be told, Nader has as much right to run as anyone. And if someone who voted for Ralph doesn’t understand the consequences, well maybe it’s good for us all that that person’s vote was “thrown away”. Same goes for those who voted for Buchanan (who, btw is not running this time).
What’s your damage, Heather? In some fantasy world, a vote has every ounce of meaning the voter wants to put into it. In this world, it means only what the voting system will let it mean, no more, and possibly less. I don’t intend to demand anyone vote against their wishes. I do intend to point out that by acting directly on their wishes it is quite possible they will be acting against their own goals. No voting system is perfect, and these are the kinds of issues we have to deal with. If you feel it is your constitutional right to keep paddling forward when I tell you a waterfall is ahead, who am I to argue? Neither should you be surprised if someone is yelling for you to stop.
Has someone hacked your account? I can’t believe you’re flying off the handle like this. Did you read the links?
I’m reading this thread, where people are saying (admittedly in jest) that they’d like to kill Nader. Because the man has the nerve to run for office, and some people might make the mistake of voting for him instead of the “right” candidate! If you don’t approve of Nader’s candidacy, then you don’t have to vote for him. I’m not going to vote for him, and no one is going to make me. We all get to vote for whoever we like. And that includes being able to “throw away” our votes on someone outside the major parties.
All he had to do was win his own friggin’ home state. If Bush loses by a paper thin margin this time, I doubt anyone is going to blame the Libertarians. The Dems need to figure out a way to accomodate Nader. Either that, or make him irrelevant.
Why the fuck do we have to blame anyone, John? The facts speak for themselves. If Nader voters wanted political power to shift left, a vote for Nader failed to accomplish this. If Nader voters wanted to make a point to the Democrats, well, maybe this worked and maybe it didn’t. If Nader voters just wanted to say, “Hey, here’s a piece of paper on which I can show people that I like Nader,” well, they accomplished that. But voting is used for other purposes than just telling everyone who we like.
Voting is attempting to shape political power. Presumably, voters have 1) an ideological goal in mind and 2) will vote for who they think will accomplish their goal in (1). The funny part is, sometimes, a vote for the person who they think will accomplish their goal can actually act against their goal. As we see in this case, if Nader voters’ goal was to shift political power to the left, by voting for Nader (a leftie) they shifted power to the right.
Whether or not anyone blames independent parties, independent parties will still have an effect iff voters that voted for the independent parties still preferred the loser to the winner, and the number of votes that went to the independent party would have been enough to change the election. How hard is this to understand?
Why blame them? They got what they wanted out of their vote.
You’re right, I don’t want to suggest otherwise. I do want to suggest that those independent or third-party voters whose purpose is to shift the balance of political power in their favor rather than strictly choose a single candidate to the exclusion of all others should reconsider how voting works, and what a vote for any particular candidate “means”. Free speech works this way, too.
I think its a huge statement when you can’t win your own state in a presidential election. If the people that know you best AND that originally put you in office in the Senate, and in Gore’s case the people that also supported your father for years and years, no longer support you for the office, why should the rest of the country be convinced they should elect you? Again, I hate to keep using sports analogies, but usually home field advantage, is huge and often times is the deciding factor in determining a champion. If you can’t even win at home, how do you expect to win in a nationwide election?
Essentially what I am hearing from Democrats is that the people that are voting for Nader should realize is that Kerry, or at least the Democratic candidate (most likely Kerry), is the lesser of two evils so the Nader supporters, in a close election, should help out Kerry to defeat Bush. I think this sort of thinking underestimates the profound distrust of the whole system that most independent and third party voters have. People who vote third party are sick of having to vote based on which candidate is "not quite as bad" and want to be able to vote for someone that they really believe would be a real alternative if elected. IF, in every single election, you give into the notion that you must vote Democrat or Republican because otherwise the "more evil" person might win, you never break the cycle of the exclusive two party system. In the long run, over many years, if people would truly vote for who they believe is the best person for the job rather than for the major party candidate that "just isn't quite as bad," we would all be much better off because it would force both the Democrat and Republican parties to no longer take any vote for granted.
And for the record, I post all this as a disgruntled conservative that just can’t bring myself to vote for Bush again in 2004 and is actively looking for a more moderate alternative. Nader will not be it. So far I have not found that candidate. Can you write in a vote for president?
This simply isn’t the case. In every election, there will be a pool of people, or at least one person, whose vote(s) is(are) critical to the result. The question these people face is how they want the election to go. Consider, for example, what would happen if independent voters had the opportunity to wait and see what would happen before they voted.
In the 2K election, assume all states have voted, and all PubDems have voted, and Florida is in dispute, but Nader voters haven’t voted yet. Given the opportunity to decide the election for Gore or Bush, but not for Nader who they know cannot win by the results of other states, which vote will further their own interests? It is really naive (but not necessarily morally wrong) to think a vote is simply a tool to express opinion. It is an activity aimed at aligning various political powers with one’s interests.
Suppose the ballot was designed with three and only three candidates, and the voter ranked them as follows: they indicate the person they would most prefer their vote went to, but, if that person couldn’t win, they then indicate with a different mark who they’d wish their vote went to. Am I to believe that all Nader voters would have picked Nader, Bush? Or am I to believe that they would pick Nader, WriteIn? Again, what if they knew their vote would swing the election? Did Nader voters really prefer Bush to Gore? – because that’s what happened. If they didn’t prefer Bush to Gore, their vote failed to express their preferences.
That is kind of how it works in Australia (and the UK I assume). In each electorate the votes of the lowest ranked candidate are distributed to the next choice of the voter until someone has more than 50% of the vote. That way the least disliked candidate wins. It encourages lots of people to stand for election in some areas. People even stand as independents against the party they belonged to, on matters of principle or hubris. You can either give your preference to the person your candidate nominates or choose for yourself.
If that was what happened in the US in 2000 Nader’s votes would go to whoever he or the voter wanted to win if Nader didn’t.
This prevents problems with third parties, like a vote of A 41% B 40% and C 19% and all the C voters hate A. Under a first past the post system you elect a candidate that 59% of the electorate don’t want.
Our voting system just isn’t set up for more than two candidates. People should be able to vote for their favorite candidate without helping their least favorite candidate. I don’t think that should be controversial.
It’s not Nader’s fault our voting system sucks, though. The only question is: Does a vote for Nader increase the probability that our system gets updated to allow for more than two candidates in a reasonable way? I don’t know. Maybe if the democrats win, they’ll do something about it out of fear. If so, then Nader did accomplish something.
If anyone needs to be blamed, it is those who could change our voting system to allow for more than two parties, but fail to do so.
Exactly, don’t ask. If everyone “compromises” in the American system, the election will have the same result as if the first round of runoff voting was held in the court of public opinion… problem is, as we see in this thread, not everyone realizes this. Any voting system which encourages more than two parties has my preference.
I think a little more than that was accomplished during the last presidential election. As badly as things turned out, at least it demonstrated two things to the American people:
The election system currently in place is weird, complicated, and may be in serious need of change
and
Your vote really does matter! It means something! It can alter the course of the nation!
Now, #1 can interfere with #2, but I think they’re both true. Many voters/potential voters probably didn’t believe it before, though. I’m not sure how seriously I took #2 myself before the 2000 election – if I remember my state of mind correctly, I thought Gore would probably win (not by a wide margin, but a safe win all the same) no matter what l’il ol’ me did. More than one Nader voter told me they didn’t think their votes would make any difference to the Democratic party, as the Dems were sure to get plenty of votes anyway. Why not vote Green, since it could make a real difference to them in their quest to get federal matching funds next time around?
Even on that point things didn’t work out the way Nader supporters would have liked, but if there’s a silver lining to this whole thing it is that maybe now more people care about voting. Heck, I’m planning to return to the US this fall partially because I’m afraid that otherwise my vote might end up as one of the uncounted absentee ballots! (I also want to go home for Thansgiving.) Maybe now more people will bother to vote, and will bother to think carefully about who they’re voting for.
Maybe someday we’ll get some election reform too, although I’m not holding my breath. Anyone who wins under the current system has little incentive to change it.
Of course, it hasn’t been changed at all, and it doesn’t appear that it will be because most people have (despite what you say) forgotten about the issue. Some demonstration.
Aren’t elections to the House of Representatives based on proportional representation? Multiple-seats, geographically split… small parties can win some seats.
The problem with the parliamentary democracy system is that the party which wins the most seats gets to choose the leader/prime minister. Sometimes, too much power is concentrated in one party as they get to make legislative and executive decisions.
How is it implemented? If party A gets 30% of the overall votes, they are automatically assigned 30% of the seats? IOW, there is no geographical component?
