I’ve lived in California, in a fairly liberal area my entire life. Whenever election time comes around, I constantly hear “Well, I’d vote for so-and-so if I thought he’d stand a chance of winning”–this was particularly noticeable during the last presidential election, when the vast majority of people I talked with voiced support for Nader, but didn’t want to vote for him because “he wouldn’t win anyway” (yes, yes, I’m quite aware this isn’t necessarily indicitive of the rest of the country.).
So, why don’t people vote the way they want to vote, and not the way they think everybody else will vote? Sure, the guy’s probably not going to win, but perhaps if he got a significant percentage of the vote it would boost his chances in further elections. It really bugs me to hear so much verbal support for alternative canidates, but no one ever has the balls to put that support where it counts, at the polls. Why is that?
Peace,
~Mixie
Yes, I realize this probably sounds extremely naive, but really–everyone bitches about the two-party system and such, but no one ever does anything about it. What gives?
In a winner take all process like we have in the US, it’s a very rational decision to not vote for someone like Nader. There is no way on God’s green earth (pun intended) that Nader is going to win. Voting for him is throwing your vote away. But if it makes you feel better, go for it!
This is exactly what I think the OP is talking about; the notion that if you do not vote for the eventual winner, you have “thrown away” your vote. There is nothing wasteful about voting your conscience, and nothing to gloat over by choosing a candidate just so that you can say, “I voted for the winner”. That truly would be thowing away your vote.
I never understood that myself. I vote almost exclusively for libertarians, even though they usually stand little chance of winning. And while I lean more towards the conservative side of the spectrum, I will not under any circumstances vote for Bush, even though Texas for him will be a free ride.
I am also tired of hearing people say “you’re throwing your vote away.” I say not voting is throwing it away, voting my choice, no matter who or how low their chances are, is not.
Imagine there is an election with ten voters and three candidates. (assume, as is traditional, that ties are broken by a coin flip)
Candidate A: You like him.
Candidate B: You don’t like him.
Candidate C: You despise him and he despises you, and he has sworn to make your life a living hell if elected.
The nine other voters have announced for whom they will vote. One is going for A, four for B, and four for C.
In this situation, would you “vote your heart” and choose your favored candidate, A, or would you vote strategically for B as the best candidate that has a chance of actually winning?
I propose that the only rational thing to do in this situation is to vote B in order to forestall the election of someone even worse.
This is an extreme situation, but the same logic applies to a lesser degree in any election. Your vote is not a mere expression of opinion but has a real chance, albeit normally a small one of, determining who wins the election — but only if you cast it wisely, towards one of the candidates who will finish in the top two.
Look at it this way: In 2000, a vote for Nader siphoned off what would have been, if Nader had not run, votes for Gore. Therefore, in can be said that a vote for Nader was, in fact, a vote for Bush because it completely undermined Bush’s opponent at the expense of a bottom-feeder with no chance of winning.
The reality is that if your candidate has no chance of winning whatsoever, you’re choosing to leave the better of the two candidates to chance rather than reinforcing his position and getting him elected. President Bush should fall on his knees and thank God every single night that Nader ran in 2000.
Nader/LaDuke got 97,488 votes. If a little over 0.55% of the Green Party voters in Florida had voted for the Democrats instead, Al Gore would be in the White House now instead of George W. Bush.
JasonFin–I think what I’m seeing is more like this:
Three people definitely want to vote for Candidate C. Three people definitely want to vote for Candidate B. Three people want to vote for Candidate A, but because he “doesn’t stand a chance of winning,” waffle and end up voting for either B or C, a second choice. One goes ahead and votes for Candidate A. Everybody points and laughs at Candidate A for making such a poor showing at the polls. John Mace: why is voting for the candidate who best represents my politics throwing away my vote? Again, I’m probably being totally naive, but I can’t stop hoping that maybe a percentage of the votes, if it’s significant enough, is enough to… make a point? I guess what I’m trying to say is if five or ten percent of people voice a dissenting opinion, that’s better than the five or ten percent keeping their mouth shut and going along with the established parties in a “lesser of two evils” vote, thus giving zero indication at the polls that a portion of the public does not want either of those two in office.
I just think that if more people voted their concience, there’d be quite a different showing in the numbers, rather than just in public opinion polls.
Couldn’t they reform the voting system so that people could have a “first choice” for a candidate, and if that candidate doesn’t win the vote goes to their “second choice” so people can vote their conscience and still not “throw their vote away”
Was “making a point” worth economic turmoil, a war and occupation of a major country, laws that depending upon who you talk to abridge your rights, and pure, unadulterated political divisiveness in virtually every respect worth voting for Nader in 2000?
Sometimes you have to vote holding your nose, but voting your conscience is rarely worth the price that ends up being paid down the road.
Because it’s essentially a second vote and you don’t get to hedge your bets in an election that way. It’s cowardly. Vote for who you want in office, end of story and if your choice doesn’t win - tough luck. You don’t get two votes to my one.
Yes, Blalron, they could, and in San Francisco they recently have.
In the system known as “instant runoff voting” or IRV, the voter gets to rank-order the candidates for an office by preference rather than choosing just one. If the voter’s first choice does not get a majority of first-choice votes, that vote still counts to help elect the voter’s second choice. If IRV had been used in the 2000 presidential election, most of Nader’s voters would have voted for Gore as their second choice, and most of Buchanan’s voters would have voted for Bush as their second choice. I believe this would have thrown the election to Gore – I think Nader did get a lot more votes than Buchanan. The point is, the third-party candidates would not have been “spoilers.” To the contrary, a third-party candidacy would actually increase the support of the nearest sympathetic major-party candidate, by boosting his voter turnout. Remember, a lot of people who voted for Nader would not have voted at all if Nader had not been on the ballot.
In March 2002, voters in the city of San Francisco approved a measure to adopt IRV for city elections. (Earlier the voters had narrowly rejected a proposal to elect the city council by proportional representation, a system for electing multimember policymaking bodies – that’s another discussion.) The system was supposed to be in place for the upcoming mayoral elections, November 4, 2003. However, John Arntz, the city elections director, insisted it would be impossible to put the new vote-tallying system in place by that date. A coalition of pro-IRV groups filed suit, but the judge agreed with Arntz and ordered the election to go forward under the city’s old runoff system. It now looks as if the implementation of IRV will be postponed until 2004. You can read several news articles about this at the website of the Center for Voting and Democracy, http://www.fairvote.org/sf/irvlawsuit.htm.
There are active organizations for state-level PR, IRV or both in the following states (all links found on the “Web Links” page of the website of the Center for Voting and Democracy, www.fairvote.org):
Well, the alternative is proportional representation, where a party gets seats in a house in proportion to the percentage of the popular vote. The advantage to PR, is you get a true multi-party system. The disadvantage is that you get minority governments, and that makes it harder for politicians to effect major change. It’s a price I’d be well willing to pay, given that most of the time that politicians effect major change, they f*** something up royally. But that’s just MHO coming out I figure if it ain’t broken, no need to give a majority government the power to muck it up. If it IS broken, and a couple hundred multi-party delegates can’t agree on how best to fix it, maybe the option a majority party would choose if there was one isn’t the best idea going. And if it is broken, and someone has a genuinely good idea on how to go about fixing it, they should have no trouble getting support for their plan from a house with a minority government and several different points of view represented.
'Course, the other disadvantage is that to say there’s something wrong with the American Way is enough to get you audited by the CIA these days
Funny I voted Nader because I knew he couldn’t win. If he had had a chance I probibly would have voted for Gore. I knew Bush would win my home state no matter what, so I felt it didn’t really matter who I voted for. I couldn’t stand either Bush or Gore so I voted for Nader because I liked what he had done for consumer safety and wanted to see his party get that 2% to get matching funds next time. In 2004 I’ll throw my vote away again on someone else, because I know GW is taking my (and technically his and untechnically his running mates) state. Oh well, hopefully the rest of the country will have better sense.
Many people seem to think instant runoff voting is the ideal system, but it has a serious problem: it is not always in a candidate’s best interest to gain support. Increasing the number of people who vote for you can sometimes hurt you under an instant-runoff-voting system.
Consider a completely imaginary election with four candidates: “Bush,” “Gore,” “Nader,” and “Buchanan.” The population is divided as follows. 10% of people are Populists who like Nader most, Buchanan second, Bush third, and Gore least. 40% are Liberals who like Gore most, Nader second, Buchanan third, and Bush least. 21% are Authoritarians who like Buchanan most, Bush second, Nader third, and Gore least. Finally, 29% are Conservatives who like Bush most, Gore second, Buchanan third, and Nader least.
This set of preferences is summarized in the following table:
% Likes Most <-------------> Likes Least
10 Nader Buchanan Bush Gore
40 Gore Nader Buchanan Bush
21 Buchanan Bush Nader Gore
29 Bush Gore Buchanan Buchanan
If the election were held using a simple plurality system, Gore would get the most votes and would therefore win. An instant-runoff system is more complicated. For the rules, I quote the Center for Voting and Democracy’s IRV FAQ:
Let’s see how the election proceeds if Instant Runoff Voting is in place and everyone votes their preferences.
First, Nader is eliminated for getting the fewest votes. All his votes go to Buchanan, the second choice of the Populists. Now Gore has 40%, Buchanan 31%, and Bush 29%. Bush is eliminated for having the fewest votes and all his votes go to Gore, the second choice of the Conservatives. Gore wins the election with a 69% majority of the votes.
Now, consider an alternative scenario. Before the election, Gore gives a speech to the Populists. It is so persuasive that two fifths of them decide that they like Gore best out of all the candidates. Their other preferences remain the same, so they become Liberals. Now the population falls as follows:
% Likes Most <-------------> Likes Least
6 Nader Buchanan Bush Gore
44 Gore Nader Buchanan Bush
21 Buchanan Bush Nader Gore
29 Bush Gore Buchanan Buchanan
Gore has gained four points in the polls. If a plurality election were held, he would win even more handily. But consider what happens if the election is held using Instant Runoff Voting.
First, as before, Nader is eliminated for getting the fewest votes. All his votes go to Buchanan. Now Gore has 44%, Buchanan 27%, and Bush 29%. Here the situation is different. Buchanan has the fewest votes, so he is eliminated. All his votes go to Bush, the second choice of the Authoritarians and the third choice of the Populists. Bush now wins the election with 56% majority support to Gore’s 44%.
As a result of gaining support, Gore has transformed an election he would have won into an election he loses. The people who changed their opinion in favor of Gore did not also increase their support for Bush, the eventual winner; in fact he is now their least favorite out of all the candidates! This outcome is counterintuitive, to say the least.
Plurality voting has problems, but one thing can be said of it: it is always in a candidate’s best interest to get more votes. Instant runoff voting eliminates this rule. In doing so, it separates the outcomes of elections from the opinions of the people.
I’ve always thought that the point system would work pretty well.
With five candidates, first choice is worth five points, second four, etc. While there are scenarios where a candidate that is fairly well liked across the board (think pre-sellout Colin Powell), might be the second choice on a LOT of ballots, while the first place votes are split between a Gore and Bush type, thus giving the win to Powell, I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing.
If someone’s not my favorite choice, but seems equally liked by all sides, I think they’d make a pretty good president.
I figure if it ain’t broken, no need to give a majority government the power to muck it up. If it IS broken, and a couple hundred multi-party delegates can’t agree on how best to fix it, maybe the option a majority party would choose if there was one isn’t the best idea going. And if it is broken, and someone has a genuinely good idea on how to go about fixing it, they should have no trouble getting support for their plan from a house with a minority government and several different points of view represented.