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A voter's struggle.
Ruzan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Quick question. If you vote for someone that you know has no chance to win, but is really the only person worthy of your vote, did you waste your vote?
If you say "plz" because it is shorter than "please" then I'll say "no" because it is shorter than "yes".
Ruzan on
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In principle, no, you didn't waste it. A vote for a candidate who can't win can help to bolster the ideas she stands for in the long term. But that doesn't mean voting for her is tactically the best way for you to promote your politics, or hers. Sometimes you have to cast the vote that will most hurt the candidate you most disagree with. If the antichrist is running neck in neck with a candidate you don't really care for, you have to vote for the one you don't care for. A lot depends on the situation.
I think the only right way to do it is to vote for the candidate you believe in. Tacky as that sounds.
In any case, it is kind of hard to tell, as this is pretty vague. Are we talking nominations or actual elections here?
Thank you for the reply, the only problem i have with it is your use of "she" and "her".
If my original post was too vague, I guess I can just go ahead and spill it. Just didn't want this to be the #200th Ron Paul thread is all.
- And talking "actual elections"
However in a case where there were (say) 2 politicians who stood a chance of winning and several who do not it's often better to vote for the guy with a chance that you would prefer rather than using your vote on a no-chance guy who more accurately represents your views. The no-chance guy's never going to win and it's probably a good idea to vote for the "lesser of two evils" so that the guy you really dislike doesn't win. Essentially you'd be voting against rather than voting for.
it's not a waste of a vote. in an ideally-functioning democracy, you should be voting for the person whom you feel is best qualified for the position. if your candidate has no clear hope of winning at all, you at least send the frontrunners a signal that they didn't secure your vote because their stances or campaigns didn't convince you, and that they have to adjust to gain your trust and your vote.
of course, in the real world, things aren't ideal. but if we value democracy as an ideal, i don't think we should be the ones helping to perpetuate the bad aspects of democratic voting processes.
that being said, i have a hate-on for John Edwards right now and know that that's completely at odds with my principles :P
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
One of the cool things about philosophy is that it's conventional to use 'she' as the generic third person pronoun.
fightinfilipino, you are the winner of the best sig ever.
Well I thought the author was assuming something about my vote heading towards scag clinton or something.
I didn't know you were talking about Ron Paul.
That was my own fault for being so vague.
I don't see why voter strategy is bad, in this instance. I'm certainly not going to vote for Kucinich, and I don't see why I would in an ideally functioning democracy either. Coalition building is a part of any democracy, ideal or not, and that requires compromise.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you— What is wrong with America!
Wow.
You're saying scag clinton is what's wrong with america? Well the people in new hampshire ssure don't agree with you!
Only having two parties with a realistic chance at getting enough votes to matter (at least on the national level) leads to stagnation.
In fairness I think that Paul been elbow-deep in vagina enough times to qualify as an honorary woman.
It might be best if people simply ignored what everyone else thought and voted what they felt was best, especially for voter turnout. This doesn't work too well in the two-party system, though, because having two candidates with similar ideological views hurts both of them.
I just wish more young people would vote.
No, he's saying the mentality that breeds that idiotic term is what's wrong.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
A lot of Americans don't like it that way either, which was the purpose of Ralph Nader running under the Green Party in 2000. He didn't expect to win, but was trying to get enough of the vote to get federal recognition and money for a third party, which he failed to do. It will never change because as long the two parties stay in power, they're going to do everything they can to shut out any third parties. That, and a lot of third parties also tend to run on platforms like don't expect or even want to win, but whatever.
While I don't like Noam Chomsky, he did say something that is true, at least IMO. He said that the U.S. is not a two party system; it's a one party system, and the Democrats and Republicans are merely two factions of the same party, both representing the interests of the elite.
As for the OP, it depends on the scenario. If you are referring to the U.S. primary, if it is a winner-takes-all state, then yes, you've mostly wasted your vote. Otherwise, sort of. If the candidate can get any delegates, it's worth it because it could be warning sign to the party that their front runner is losing backing and could face worse challenges in the general election, and it creates a public gauge on how the public is thinking/feeling. This still happens when the popular vote is counted in the primaries in winner-takes-all states, but it doesn't have quite the effect if popular vote isn't linked to the number of delegates.
Yeah, good thing you're in fucking Sweden. Read through the primaries thread or read up on the candidates. They're extremely different.
In case it hasn't been noted yet, this only concerns the pragmatic value of your vote - and not everyone votes along those lines anyway.
It's a representative democracy, so you vote for the person who you want to represent you. If someone represents you 90%, and someone else represents you 75%, it would seem the smart thing to do would be to vote for the person who represents you the most. Putting your support behind a candidate you don't truly support, regardless of their chance of victory, seems to entirely miss the point of voting for me.
Unless, of course, there is another candidate that only represents you 25% running neck in neck with the one who represents you 75%. At this point Thanatos will just say that your vote has absolutely zero chance of mattering any way you slice it, but the point is that in a first-past-the-post system, there are situations where the most optimal end result might require voting for the less-than-optimal candidate.
EDIT: And even this only matters if a race is close enough, or a third candidate popular enough, and if that candidate draws significantly more from one side than the other (thus impacting the end result). Like Nader in 2000, or Perot in 1992.
Of course there is the politics of compromise, but it shouldn't be the voters compromising their first-choice votes, it should be the elected representatives compromising with each other. There are so many superior voting systems to "one vote, winner-takes-all" that it just maddens me to no end that it's the only method available in the overwhelming majority of American elections. If there's any reason to discourage me from voting, it's exactly that. I've personally voted in every single election available to me (minus two special elections, I won't lie) and yet appallingly few of those votes have been represented in any meaningful way by the eventual elected representatives. It's a mess. It pisses me off.
As much as I can read about Swedish politics, I would never offer an opinion on their political system/workings because I don't live there. I can't understand Swedish life because I'm not Swedish. Let the Swedes figure out their politics; let the Americans figure theirs out. I see this thread going south in a big hurry, so PM any response you may have -- probably won't be checking back.
The keyword here being "candidates". I'll gladly read up on the politics of the survivors when the poop flinging is done.
You're probably okay voting for Ron Paul if you honestly and in a fully-informed fashion don't really care between the viable candidates. Though I stress "honestly and in a fully-informed fashion".
Obama/Hilary will end up for the Dems. Compare them to any of the Republicans. They differ on a lot of issues.
You're in favour of an abundance of parties, then, each citizen voting for the party that best represents their own interests and then the parties forming coalitions, etc as necessary?
I will instead vote for Discordia and spray-paint a billboard or something.
The nation will be well-served by your contribution to democracy.
That's why I'll write myself in on the ballot.
And whether or not multitudes of parties is desirable (or even achievable given various voting systems which still aren't winner-takes-all) at the federal level, it is without a doubt applicable at the state and local level, and it pisses me off that it's not an option that's even considered.
Of course, one of the major reasons we'll never see reform on this front from either the Republics or the Democrats is because their hold on power is predicated on the winner-takes-all system, and any changes to that would seriously endanger their parties.
I also realize this means we would get some fundy nuts out of Kansas, but at least in this instance they probably wouldn't be quite as wed to special interest money as well.