I know it’s been said already, but let me add my voice to the chorus who have pointed out the obvious fact that if liberals hadn’t thrown their votes away on Nader, we wouldn’t have a shithead like Bush in the White House right now.
Why not vote the way I want?
Because between the Democrats already in the White House giving Bush every freaking thing he wants, and a useless media refusing to call him on ANYTHING for the first 2 1/2 years or so, and all the mainstream Americans who were completely duped into buying a Saddam Hussein/9-11 connection…oh, let’s not forget the <b>blatant robbery</b> in Florida…well, what difference does it make, really.
(Too tired for cites. All this has been hashed over long enough. I still cannot believe some of you still blame Ralph Nader for everything.)
My brother once told me a funny, if rather depressing, story. He used to work in a clothes shop with a girl who wasn’t the brightest button on the waistcoat. Near the last (UK) election, she asked him “Who are you planning to vote for?”. Thinking this was a surprising change from conversations regarding clothes or getting pissed, he replied “Errm, Labour I think”.
“Yeah” she agreed, “ I think they’re gonna win too”.
Pardon?! As the conversation progressed, it became increasingly obvious that this girl’s idea of democracy was that you vote for who you think will win. Your vote is a bet and your prize is being on the winning side. Like I said, funny but a bit sad.
But the saddest thing of all is that most people vote like this a little bit, maybe even a lot.
The argument goes that, in an election between two popular candidates, one of whom you hate and one of whom you are ambivalent about (or at least hate less), voting for a minority candidate whose policies best reflect your own opinions increases the likelihood of your enemy winning. So instead, you choose the best placed non-enemy candidate, who’s policies you think are rather bland but are at least not as bad as the Baddies. Plus you get the brief glow of victory when the result comes in.
However, the reality is that after your ‘victory’ those things you think are incredibly important simply don’t even get debated. Countless more policies you think are absolutely wrong get put into effect instead. Eventually you feel a little guilty that you’d agreed wholeheartedly with their manifesto (after all, a cross/chad is a cross/chad regardless who writes/stamps it) and vow to vote differently next time. The next time comes around, and what happens? Your enemy looms large again, you can’t bring yourself to vote for any of the candidates who might lose their deposits, and so you bet on the favourite to beat the enemy.
The problem is that so much weight is attached to what should not be done, rather than focussing on what specific policies you really, truly, honestly believe in yourself. People have said that my personal policies might bring chaos, violent revolution and untold suffering to the country because they would be so unpopular. This is true. However, the only way they will ever be implemented is when enough people vote for them, ie. when they’re not unpopular anymore.
So don’t worry. It’s OK to lose. Hey, I even get a kick out of feeling like part of a tiny minority trying to see the future in our heads while banging them on a brick wall. The real question is:
If not even you yourself will vote for your own opinions, why should anyone else ever do so?
My state’s vote went to Gore by a landslide anyway, so it’s hard to feel personal responsibility for the clusterf… uh, situation in Washington, simply for voting Green in that election.
So, I guess my question has been answered. I want to repeat what BrainGlutton said, to those of you who feel that voting for Nader caused Bush to win the election. A large percentage of us who voted for Nader wouldn’t have voted at all, had he not been on the ticket.
My candidate is not going to win anyway. My vote doesn’t matter when it comes down to the wire. I find it very difficult to stomach the idea of voting for the person who’s policies I hate the least, rather than the person who truly represents my political ideals.
Nothing is ever going to change.
I do have another question–what if Bush had won by a significant portion? There wouldn’t be all this bitching about minority candidates having “screwed up” the election, blah blah blah, but it wouldn’t change the fact that a large part of the population hates what Bush is doing, right? But it takes millions and millions of people to elect a president, so the majority of the population believed that he’d be the best guy for the job. Were all those people wrong? No matter who you’re voting for, if it’s not the “winning” candidate, you have to believe that everybody else is wrong and your guy has all the right answers. But a majority of the population doesn’t think the way that you do, and can’t be convinced to think otherwise. Therefore, it doesn’t ever matter what you want, unless you’re on the winning team to begin with. If you were, and your candidate does a good job, then you get to gloat. If you were wrong, and we get Bush in the White House, then we have to go through what we’re going through until the next election. I hear there’s some debate over whether he’s going to hang on for another term. Why there’s even a question, I’m not sure, but if a majority of the population believes he did a good job and votes to keep him in, then what the hell good does my vote do?
I’m sure that makes no sense whatsoever. It’s early, I’m young, and liberal, and probably have no idea what I’m talking about.
~Mixie
The idea of voting for a third party, besides for the idealistic notion that you vote your conscience, is that if the third party gets a significant portion of ballots (3% would be significant), then a major party will start to court the voters of that third party by adopting some of its ideas. Anyway, that’s the justification I use to vote Libertarian instead of Republican.
But Perot’s basic approach is how new parties are typically formed; an alternative that appeals to a segment of voters and an ability to tolerate losing results for several elections while national recognition slowly increases. The Republican party established itself pretty rapidly, from formation in 1854 to Lincoln’s election in 1860, but they had the slavery issue as an impetus.
Trouble is, Perot collapsed into an almost-comical hodgepodge of paranoia and blew off whatever credibility he was slowly building. Had he kept his eyes on the prize and not made nutty remarks about the government interfering with his daughter’s wedding, his reform party could have made even larger gains in 2000 (getting a few members in congress would have been impressive) and fielded a candidate (not necessarily Perot himself) in 2004 with a chance of victory against a war-weakened Bush.
Overall, though, the fixed-term system the Americans have discourages multiple parties. If three viable parties existed, one could imagine a three-way split in Congress, with the deadlock lasting for a solid two years. Other multiparty nations have the “no confidence” mechanism to dissolve a minority government. Of course, that can lead to 50 governments in 50 years, as the Italians have learned.
Has it shown any signs of working? I would expect that a 3rd party vote would have more meaning if cast in a local election. And I think that is where 3rd parties should try to break through. Get your foot in the door, show the rest of the electorate that you’re not a whack-o, and then try to go national. The Libs and the Greens are stuck at step 2, and haven’t been successful.
I don’t blame him, I was just pointing out that not wanting Bush in the White House would have been a perfectly logical reason not to vote for him.
Posted by Bryan Ekers:
Actually, Bryan, the real problem is that Perot was not really interested in forming a political party at all. He wanted a vehicle for his own candidacy, and stamped out any attempt to turn the Reform Party into something more, e.g., a party that would run candidates for Congress or for state or local offices. He crafted the party’s rules to keep the organization and all its state chapters completely under his thumb. After Perot got too old and dropped out of the picture, Pat Buchanan was able to use those same rules to take over the party by packing a convention with his own people – resulting in the party’s effective death, though it still maintains a nominal existence. You can read the whole story in Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America, by Micah L. Sifry (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Posted by Bryan Ekers:
Bryan, please keep in mind that we Americans do not have a parliamentary system. At the national and state level, we have a separation-of-powers system where the executive, the president or governor, is elected independently of the legislature. The concept of a “minority government” is meaningless here. If there is no majority party in the legislature, that does not mean it is impossible or even difficult to “form a government” (what here we call an administration), because the legislature is only tangentially involved in that process. The president appoints the cabinet secretaries and the Senate votes up or down on them. In most states it’s more or less the same. In some states, some cabinet secretaries and other constitutional officers are elected separately from the governor. But in no U.S. state does the legislature actually choose the cabinet.
If there is no majority party in the legislature, what that does mean is that no one party can get its way on everything, even if the governor or the president is of that same party. All legislation would have to be agreed upon by enough parties to make up a majority. But that hardly constitutes “deadlock.”
Exactly, he lacked the discipline or the foresight to capitalize on a perceived weakness of the Dems and Reps and form a viable third party when he had a good opportunity to do so.
Plus he was nuts.
Well, duh. In exchange for keeping a strong executive (and fixed elections), your system ended up discouraging multiple parties, because mutliple parties can lead to paralysis. Even in very recent history, many hearts went aflutter when the Senate looked like it was going to be 50-50.
Interestingly, the American President is much like a King except he can’t dissolve Parliament (i.e. Congress) at will. The balance of powers scheme is really quite interesting and if Canada ever becomes a republic (which I’d very much like to see in my lifetime) I think we should emulate it to some degree, elevating our Governor-General post into something beyond the merely ceremonial.
Political parties do certain things because they know they’ll get votes regardless of how bad they fuck their constituency. Republicans, for example, know they’ll get the conservative vote, no matter what, because everyone will always vote against democrats. So what does that mean? They don’t have to represent conservatives. They’ll get the vote regardless.
So what happens? Conservative voters go out and vote for Republicans, because hey, at least they’re better than the democrats, right? And then conservatives screw them royally. No actual economic conservatism - INCREASES in government spending, etc. And what happens? People will still vote for them, even though they don’t represent their interests, because they’re convinced it’s better than voting for the other guy.
End result? People mindlessly voting “not to lose” end up losing big, when the government they elected doesn’t even come close to representing their interests.
When you vote to lose small, instead of lose big, you still lose.
So, if, say, 15% of people who actually believed in economic conservatism ended up voting libertarian, and the republicans lost the election because of this, sure, you might ‘lose big’ by having a democrat elected (not that there’s really any difference - but there’s a perceived one). But the republicans will realize that they can’t take their conservative constituency for granted any longer. They might actually try to work to represent those people.
Sure, you’ll lose some to the bigger of two evils, but if you keep voting for the lesser, unconditionally, nothing will ever change and you’ll always lose.
It’s disgusting - neither side of our political spectrum really represents those who vote for them - they have their own, seperate agendas - but they can always count on the votes from the people they screw, because everyone is absolutely convinced that the best they can do.
I find not voting to be a dereliction of duty, of sorts, so I do. But damned if I’m going to help propogate this systematic fuckjob that we’ve collectively been duped into.
Voting to lose less is still voting to lose, and I’m not going to take part in this bullshit system towards which everyone feels compelled. Call me a fool if you want.
Thank you, SenorBeef, that’s essentially exactly the series of thoughts I was trying to vocalize, albeit poorly.
~Mixie
Exactly. And it’s a ridiculous position to be forced into.
Imagine this: a candidate that actually stood for something that people believed in. Sorry, too far-fetched.
And you know this for a fact, do you? Perhaps they might simply not have voted at all? The one thing that never gets brought up during campaign season is that voter turnout is incredibly low. Pundits blame it on public apathy, but might the blame not be on the candidates themselves, who have nothing of substance to say?
And this would be better…why? Considering that the two men agreed on a vast majority of points during the debates I saw, what difference would it really make that one or the other was in the White House?
Of course, the flaw in this whole post is that it assumes a system in which I am forced to vote, at however low a priority, for someone I don’t want in office. I would certainly never support a reform that told me that if I don’t cast a “least desired” vote for a candidate, that my ballot was invalid.
If the Democrats wanted the liberals to vote for them, then democratic politicians should have voted for the liberals a little more often. I’m sick of Democrats assuming that they have some sort of entitlement to the vote of the left. When was the last time the party as a whole was actually liberal? Most congressional Democrats voted in favor of what I consider to be unconstitutional war powers for the executive office last year, and very few of them lost their seats in the fall. That’s not MY party.
The unspoken thought running through this entire thread is: All the candidates suck, and the only reasonable strategy is to try to keep the suckiest of them out. This is the model of democracy?
Our OP writer may consider their viewpoint naive, but I do not. There’s no return on pretending it’s the mature thing to do to accept our two largest and lamest political parties as the only viable options. I am definitely a leftie, but it’s been a hell of a long time since I registered for ANY party.
GASP! But then you can’t vote for party nominations, I hear you cry. Not being part of a party, why should I care who they nominate? Parties are not an official part of the government, and were never intended to be by the Founding Fathers, according to all accounts I’ve read. The more elections I see, the greater that wisdom seems to me.
If I want the person as president, I’ll vote for them in the general election. If they lost a party nomination, and don’t have the spine to break ranks and appply for a write-in campaign, I probably wouldn’t regard them as leader material, anyway.
I will always cast a vote for every office on the ballot, based on the best knowledge I have of the candidates. The only wasted vote is an uncast one.
Toss me in there with SenorBeef and Scotandrsn.
As far as Im concerned political parties are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I also am registered independant, of a libertarian bent. I vote for individuals, based on any number of factors but none of those factors is just to keep another parties candidate out of office.
Its simply amazing to me the number of people in this thread who think voting for Nader or Buchanon was somehow irresponsible or something.
“If Nador had gotten less votes or hadnt ran, Gore would have won”. Well duh. If Bush had gotten less votes or hadnt ran Gore would have won as well.
If Gore had gotten less votes or hadnt run, Nador could have won. Why dont any of you blame Gore?
This whole implied ‘subvert your seflish wishes for the sake of the team’ crap is part of the problem, not the solution. There are no ‘teams’. The important thing here is that we get candidates most all of us can trust or at the least have respect for, hopefully resulting in good government and reform; its far less important that a particular group is seen to ‘win’.
It seems like some people seem to think that people are supposed to be more loyal to their party than they are to themselves. Screw that. The parties apparently are not going to change and adapt to modern realities unless or until people flock away from them. Its called market forces, and it works on political parties as well as widget makers.
Unfortunately we are going to be hearing more about IRV, and possibly even propotional rep, from the Dems and other parties as less and less people vote along party lines. I see IRV and proportional systems as convenient ways the parties can avoid having to respond to market demand. Its just another form of protectionism, and its an attempt to build party politics into the system even more than it allready is.
Im sorry, this whole attitude of ‘If I cant win then at least I can make sure their side doesnt either’ makes me sick. A few of you actually go to the polls more concerned about keeping someone out of office than putting someone in; all based on party membership. Im sorry, but to me that is absolutely disgusting, and not fit reasoning for anyone outside of 3rd grade.
This is exactly why we arent a proportional rep system, why party politics was not built into our governments structure. Because of these little petty and immature games people start playing, as if an election is some kind of popularity contest rather than a hiring decision. As if its more important for a party to be in office - or not - than it is to have good government. Absolutely disgusting.
Anyone who votes based on the letter after someones name is wasting their vote. There are decent people in all parties, but if you think party membership is more important or relevent than individual character or ability, you are wasting your vote in one hell of an irresponsible and immature way.
On the other hand, people who vote their concience, after informing themselves as well they can about a candidates position on issues, are participating in the act of democracy in the fullest sense, irregardless of the cost to any political party.
Geez, why don’t you tell us how you really feel?:rolleyes:
Or better yet, why don’t you tell the families of everyone who died in Iraq how morally superior you think you are because you refused to “play games” to keep the guy responsible from getting into office?
I will be voting for who I really want from here on out. 2000 was my first presidential election (I was 17 in '96), and I decided that the Libertarian candidate couldn’t win so I’d vote for Bush. Needless to say, my regret of that decision has risen steadily with each increase in federal spending, restriction on individual liberties, and interventionist foreign policy adopted.
It really is tempting to avoid throwing one’s vote away, and maybe there’s a case for voting for your second choice candidate if you mostly agree with him. But I, for one, am no longer going to make big sacrifices in the positions of the candidate I vote for just to get the lesser of two evils.
Yes, indeed, because he failed to vote for one asshole to keep another asshole from getting into office, he’s personally responsible for their deaths. Also, he stomps babies and kitty cats.
Well, it seems to solve the problem JasonFin pointed out with IRV:
Before Gore's speech...
% (4) (3) (2) (1)
10 (40)Nader (30)Buchanan (20)Bush (10)Gore
40 (160)Gore (120)Nader (80)Buchanan (40)Bush
21 (84)Buchanan (63)Bush (42)Nader (21)Gore
29 (116)Bush (87)Gore (58)Buchanan (29)Nader
Nader: 231
Buchanan: 252
Bush: 239
Gore: 278
After Gore's speech...
% (4) (3) (2) (1)
6 (24)Nader (18)Buchanan (12)Bush (6)Gore
44 (176)Gore (132)Nader (88)Buchanan (44)Bush
21 (84)Buchanan (63)Bush (42)Nader (21)Gore
29 (116)Bush (87)Gore (58)Buchanan (29)Nader
Nader: 227
Buchanan: 248
Bush: 235
Gore: 290
First, all those americans who died in Iraq volunteered to put themselves in that potential situation.
Second, I didnt vote for Bush or Gore.
Third, there is no such thing as ‘moraly superior’ since morality is all just made up crap anyway. If you think voting is some kind of moral choice, you may as well wave a dead chicken and throw salt over your shoulder before you vote. Myself, I prefer reason over morality any day.
My post was about self interest. Long term self interest. Those who vote strictly on party lines, or who vote just to keep someone else out, are being extremely short sighted in their self interest, in a very sophomoric way. We end up wth a bunch of candidates who are nothing but mouthpieces.
Some of the attitudes on this thread remind me of the old slavic joke:
A slav peasant is walking along, finds a bottle. He rubs the bottle and a genie pops out:
“Thank You! Now I will grant you one wish, any wish, for releasing me”
The peasant thinks for a minute.
“Well” he says “my neighbor has ten cows, and I only have three.”
“Ah!” says the genie “You want me to grant you eight cows?”
“No, no” says the peasant “I want you to kill seven of his.”
Amen.
I believe this is the “if you refuse to vote Democrat then you’re objectively pro-Republican” argument.
Do you know who I blame for G.W. Bush’s actions in office? G.W. Bush. Do you know who I blame for electing G.W. Bush? The 47% of the population that voted for him.
I most emphatically do not blame the Green Party or their voters for any of this. If I did, then I might as well blame France for not invading Washington, D.C. to disrupt Bush’s inauguration, and the invisible Moon Men for not vaporizing Bush with their Electro-Rays, because they’re just as “responsible” for Bush as the Green Party’s supporters.
Voting is the one chance most people have to express their views on how they think the country should be run. If you vote for someone who doesn’t represent your views then you’ve really thrown your vote away.