This is why we should never talk about voting with our colleagues! “Bernie’s gonna win!” I love Bernie too and I respect using your vote how you like, but yikes. Not in this situation!
Please tell me this won’t be enough to make a difference. :eek:
Voting for a write in candidate is a bit more complicated than writing their name on the ballot. It’s really a bad way to think you are going to make a difference. It’s basically not voting at all. It probably depends on which state you are in if it will make a difference for which candidate you want to win.
See Snopesfor why Bernie couldn’t win as a write-in candidate.
Nine states don’t allow write-in votes at all, and 34 require registration (for which Bernie has missed the deadline) for write-ins to be counted.
In the far fetched scenario where Bernie won enough electoral votes to deny either Trump or Clinton a majority, the election would be thrown to the House, where Trump would win hands down (since Republicans control most House delegations).
Your colleague is an idiot.
13 million people voted for Bernie in the primary.
Of them, about 90% will support Clinton. That leaves about 1.3 million who will write in Bernie, support third parties, stay home, vote Trump, etc.
Also, somehow, you’d have to get about 60 million people to ‘write in’ Bernie. Good luck with that, seeing how only 13 million could be bothered to vote for him in the primary. People are dumb.
I disagree with this, it shows a effort that you are not satisfied with either candidate, and care enough to make the effort to vote. It also challenges the moral legitimacy of the one who gets, and the two party system in that has low actual popular support (due to write-ins)
Except how often do you see any real news coverage showing a detailed breakdown of the top 5-10 vote getters for any particular federal office that includes write-ins? None of that is going to be included in election day/night coverage, which is where it would make the most impact (PR wise).
And voter turnout in presidential elections tends to hover recently between 50 to 55%. That means every single president who has won election in the last 30 years (and probably ever) has never obtained the votes of a majority of the eligible voters. They have at best only obtained a plurality of eligible voters and a majority of the actual voters. Given this, particularly since Hillary is looking likely to only win a plurality of actual voters and not a majority anyway, there really is no resonating message that even millions of people writing in candidates would especially send.
And Bernie doesn’t WANT to be written in.
I am not satisfied with either candidate but I not going to do a ‘write in’
I am going to vote for Hillary and then go :eek: ! A write in will be a vote for Trump and I hate him more than Hillary! Of all the people we have in USA how the HELL did we end up with Trump and Clinton !!!???
Actually, in most cases voting for a write-in literally means that you are throwing your vote away, since the votes will be discarded without ever being counted.
Does it spoil the whole ballot or just the presidential vote?
It spoils just the Presidential vote. Write ins aren’t easy with most forms of voting.