i _really_ wish that "No Vote" was a valid/acceptable option, and there were ramifications if "No Vote" got the majority support. I just don't buy into the "you are obligated to vote" choir, or see any value in the "vote against somebody else" vote.
Interestingly enough it seems like there is no federal rule barring states from adopting non-plurality voting systems for the president, as it is still technically the state governments that appoint the electors, and the constitution only requires that it not be "...in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime."
The House of Representatives elections rules are established with a lot more federal oversight, so I have no clue if non-plurality voting systems could be easily accomplished at the state level. Proportional representation would be specifically banned by 2 U.S. Code § 2c though.
Where could one learn more about these?
I've gotten very into this whole subject in the past - I'm generally in favor of a "Condorcet Winner Interstate Compact", sort of like the national popular vote compact except for Condorcet Winners, but I basically stopped when I realized that even if you had a perfect voting method that perfectly captured the public will, it doesn't matter if the voters are poorly educated. Better to have even a flawed voting method that encourages voters to self-educate, than a perfect voting method that encourages people to stay ignorant.
I am not sure how many third-party voters realize that Trump wins if no one reaches 270 EVs.
Anyway, I am not sure how to find a voting method that encourages people to self-educate, but in general that's part of a wider subject on how to reduce willful ignorance in the world, which is pretty fascinating to think about.
[edit]
Okay it's not actually that bad, but it's poor, particularly since the mid-90s we've had the technology to cheaply run as many simulated elections as we want given machine readable ranked-ballots.
But the benefit would be that we'd actually have data on being able to say, "Here's who would have won if we had used IRV, here's who would have won if we had used Condorcet", etc. And then later pick the actual counting method that proves effective.
I mostly like the idea is because I think the debate over counting method gets in the way of the debate over using ranked ballots.
A risk would be someone picking a different first-choice candidate than they otherwise would, out of improperly believing that their preferences would be counted.
Oh, nevermind
Did you know that the House of Reps absolutely has to limit their choices to the top three EV recipients? There's absolutely no scenario where Romney or Ryan wins.
Well, yes, but for some reason it slipped my mind when I posted the response, and I would have deleted it if you hadn't responded first. So, I'm just going to edit it down to an "Oh, nevermind" and be done with that whole line.
There's actually some imaginable scenarios where Trump wouldn't win (and where other options would be available), but it requires electors realizing before casting their votes that their won't be an electoral majority if votes are cast normally, and then colluding to vote "faithlessly" in order to give the House different options [0]. But, while imaginable and legally possible, this is quite improbable (but then, so is no candidate getting 270 EVs.)
[0] In principle, this could happen even if there was an apparent electoral majority, but its even less plausible in that case. It really only makes any kind of political sense as a response to the condition where a lack of an electoral majority means that there is going to be an unclear mandate for whomever is elected.
The main problem I have with third-party voting is that it actually increases the probability - however remotely - that the House of Reps scenario happens. (Plenty of caveats apply.)
Well, clearly third party voting is required for it to happen (barring, for the moment, faithless electors or bizarre vote tabulation errors where people who get no actual votes are certified as the winners of state-level elections, rejection of electoral votes in the Congressional count, electors simply not voting at all, or interference by state legislature to assign electors other than those that would be chosen based on the popular vote); if all popular votes are cast for one of the two major-party candidates then all electoral votes will go to one of the two major-party candidates and one of the two major party candidates will, of necessity, get a majority of EVs.
OTOH, third party voting is more likely to change which major party candidate wins certain electoral votes than it is to actually give EVs to minor candidates (and even if it does the latter, its pretty unlikely to contribute to a sub-270 situation.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system
My personal favorite system for single-winner elections is approval voting (basically just vote for as many people as you want). There are systems that are mathematically much better, but they are all considerably more complicated, and I'm of the opinion that if voters don't understand the voting system, it will damage their confidence in the electoral process.
Also, as a fun fact: note I said "deterministic" systems can't eliminate strategic voting, but the most simple voting system of all completely eliminates it: pick one ballot at random, and what/whomever was voted for on that ballot wins. Obviously you would never have a reason to vote for anything but what you want to win, but it has oodles of problems in practice.
Instant Runoff Voting is pretty terrible, but is still far better than plurality. (Its multiseat generalization, is a reasonably good method for multiseat elections.)
(IRV -- or STV -- can be made better by simply dropping the loser-elimination step and still proceeding until a candidate reaches the quota, and I think there is actually a name for this method, but I don't know it off the top of my head.)
There's a lot of mathematically better (e.g., always pick the Condorcet winner) ranked-ballot methods for single winner elections, but I'm not sure that they are better all around. While I think the Condorcet criteria is very attractive, there are merits to simplicity and ease of implementation (particularly, in ease of tabulation, including manual tabulation) that may militate in favor of something more like IRV-without-loser-elimination.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7679C7ACE93A5638
But it might be politically possible to get that prohibition on multimember districts narrowed to what it was designed to deal with, which was having multiple at-large plurality-elected seats to suppress minority representation. (When it was passed, no one was using multimember districts with PR, so they simple weren't a consideration.)
http://scorevoting.net/PropRep.html
Regarding single-winner methods, Score Voting is best. http://scorevoting.net/BayRegsFig.html
If you could directly measure internal sentiment and use a consistent function to map it it to scores, score/range voting would be a good method, and mathematical simulations tend to model this case rather than reality.
(Approval voting is good for group decisions with non-secret ballots where people can opt-out of the activity selected, and an "approve" vote is also a commitment to opt-in, because then there is a consistent meaning; range/score voting similarly can be good in group decision-making what shows are tied to a concrete price that is to be paid for or to avoid an outcome, which again makes the ballot marking have a consistent meaning.)
Here's the impact. If you vote for my team everything will be super cool and awesome. Vote for the other team and democracy dies and the terrorists win.
This has been the political narrative since the beginning of time.
I'll go ahead and argue the unpopular opinion. The more dismissive the population is of politics the more empowered they are to take direct action and have a real impact of their livelihood.
Instead of binging on mainstream news for a hours a night, you could be broadening your horizons in terms of fitness, education and building on personal relationships.
In my experience people who are nuanced in mainstream national politics are divisive and generally unpleasant to be around because they think they know what's best for you. There's a reason it's socially unacceptable to bring up politics (and religion). It's polarizing and devoid of objectivity.
No, you should not spend every evening absorbing politics. But you should spend a few hours one time looking at (all of) the options and their positions.
The actors play people's discontent while differentiating themselves by promising top-down solutions to divisive personal issues. The fundamental meta-issues fucking our society are permanently off the table - eg sane monetary policy so a middle class can save again, or restoring the rule of law and putting the NSA traitors in prison [0].
The bad policies of the next salesperson are already written, and whether the Idiot or the Criminal wins this popularity contest only affects which companies' folders they come out of. After election, the winner's job will switch to selling the status quo to their supporter-victims. This further destroys people's rationality as they double down to justify their mistake.
[0] I'll preemptively head off the "third party" comment - it's just another level of control. The idiotic divisive politics are the result of emergent behavior based on what appeals to your average person. In the event the Libertarian party actually starts picking up steam, the same thing will happen to it as happened to the Tea Party. The fundamental problem is the centralization itself, of which our blind worship of Democracy is a pillar.
I mean, how many people are really putting in the necessary research and deep consideration for choosing the person most well qualified to run the (currently) most powerful country in the world?
Probably not many.
It seems more like two competing hype machines. Which bandwagon do you want to jump on? Except we're not choosing our favorite sports teams. The repercussions can change the fate of billions.
I would rather the uninformed/uninterested stay out of it than voting randomly. Yes, I think everyone should be able to vote. But no, I don't think everyone should.
Also I'd love it if he would win, but I'm a realist mostly I'm just telling both parties they miss my vote.
If you don’t vote for a plausible candidate, then you lose the right to complain when you don’t like what happens. "I didn’t vote for him/her”, isn’t a valid excuse unless you voted against him/her.
I recognize this is a dissapointing and compromised viewpoint, but there are literally lives on the line.
I'm not voting against a candidate, i'm voting for one. And if there is nobody that represents me, i'm not going to vote. I'm not going to show approval for one of the candidates that I don't actually support, and i'm not going to feel like it's "my fault" when one of them wins.
Assume for a moment that 3rd party candidates won't win.
What makes you think that the policies and backgrounds for both of these candidates will have the same effect on our country either way?
By voting for a candidate, i'm adding to the number of people that supported them. I'm adding to the number that can be looked at later to see what the american population supports. I'm adding to the percentages that will alter what future politicians will base their platforms on.
I can't do that when I don't believe in the vast majority of what either of their platforms are based on. So I'm not going to vote for either of them.
Vote the vote that has the best chance of improving (or screwing up less in this case) whatever you care about.
Next election, politicians look at past elections. They look at what percentages each candidate got, they analyze that based on each platform, the numbers, the demographics of each state and what they voted for.
By voting for a candidate, i'm adding to the number of people that voted for them. I'm becoming part of that statistic. So i'm going to use that statistic to my advantage to get my voice heard. I'm going to vote for someone I actually believe in, even if they won't win. Then next time, at least those numbers are on the table. Maybe the next candidate will consider that by supporting "platform Y" they can get a percentage of those votes, and maybe i'll eventually have someone I support.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence for this? In 2012, the GOP did a huge study on why they lost and came to the conclusion they needed to court minorities. Not only has that not been attempted by the Presidential nominee, but it's failed at the congressional level too. As for third-party candidates, it's not clear what effect Perot, Nader and others have had over the years beyond helping elect Bill Clinton and W.
A large third-party vote this election is almost certainly going to be a reflection on the likability of the two main candidates, and not on their policies. Meanwhile the risk that our country could be substantially worse off in the meantime is real, and there's precedent for that.
During the primary candidates don't have the luxury of the middle - they need to find a large enough group of support that can push the party in some direction that's going to get widespread party approval while trying to find a candidate that still has a chance at winning the election.
If you don't want to vote for president then at least go vote for the many other things that will be decided that day!
I guess it depends on whether you're looking at it from the short-term or long-term.
It's not even a stamp of approval for the electoral system itself. If you pay me $X, but I believe that you owe me $Y >> X, I don't relinquish my claims to the remaining amount by taking what's currently on the table, unless I claim that I consider the debt settled. Same thing here - you can vote within the existing system without accepting the full legitimacy of that system. You're only accepting the limited power that your voice has in that system as a small part of the greater power that you believe you're owed.
I don't want to vote for A or B. I want to vote for C. But if by not voting for B, A gets elected, that's partly on me.
This isn't our exact situation, but if you genuinely believe one plausible candidate is better than the other (even if still bad) and you vote 3rd party, then you're wasting your vote.
Whether Gary Johnson gets 5% or 12% of the vote isn't going to fix the two party system. If you want to do that, you need to start at the local and state levels. Just running a candidate for president every four years is for publicity and messaging, not because you're ever going to win.
My vote is the voice I get in democracy. I'm not going to use it to vote in someone I don't agree with on most issues, just because the other guy is worse. Me withholding that voice (or using it to vote for someone I know won't win, but who i genuinely believe in) is the way that I can be heard. It's my way of telling future politicians that if they support X (or something close to X) that they can get a portion of those who voted for C last election.
It's my way of sending a message that the next candidate shouldn't be a serial killer AND shouldn't be involved in tax fraud. It's my call for someone who better represents me and my beliefs.
I don't blame Nader voters, because they didn't realize what could happen. Voters in 2016 have no such excuse.
Voters in 2016 are the same. Not liking a candidate doesn't mean I should feel any obligation to vote for their "main opponent". I'm voting for who I feel represents myself and my beliefs best, and if the candidate I dislike ends up winning, that's on the ones who voted for him.
The main argument for voting for a guaranteed-to-lose third-party candidate is that it gives the parties a clear, quantitative signal about how many voters their base-unfriendly policies are losing them.
And also the down-ticket races, of course, though many of them are so gerrymandered here that your votes don't matter in them, either.
This isn't a counter-argument. Yes, there are innumerable ways Gore could have gotten the handful of votes needed to push him over the top in Florida.
But it's difficult to argue that, if Nader voters voted for their second choice instead, Gore wouldn't have gotten enough votes to win. To argue otherwise is to argue that a majority of Nader voters would have picked Bush as a second pick, and that's difficult to imagine.
Do I "lose my right" to complain about Candidate B's bad choices in the same way that it's claimed I lose my right to complain about Candidate A being a sociopath when they get elected if I don't "vote against" them?
You always have the right to complain that both choices suck and the two party system hurts our democracy. But the best way to do that is not to vote for someone else; a symbolic, but possibly harmful act.
Petition the government to support rank voting (the best solution to this issue).
Vote for a third-party candidate in a local election that they might win.
Run for local (or national) office.
You shouldn't attach too much to the meaning of words. People give way too much emotional weight to the difference between "voting for" and "voting against", when the actual math behind the hood of the political system may well make them indistinguishable - and it's the math that matters.
By all means, vote third party if you believe this advances your goals! But however you vote, do so on the basis of objective math, not subjective meanings of words, or as a symbolic gesture. And in a FPTP system, the math is pretty clear - a vote for one is automatically a vote against all others - as are the consequences. If you believe that your goals are achievable, and their benefits will more than compensate the negative effect of other consequences, then it's justified. As a symbolic flipping of the middle finger, not so much.
Our votes will be analyzed, the platforms of the candidates will be analyzed, just because this election is lost, does not mean that votes for the losers were entirely worthless.
By voting for who I actually want and not voting defensively when I don't support any of the major candidates, I am making my voice heard. Maybe not for this election, maybe not for the next, but my hope is that eventually the main 2 parties will take notice and adopt some of the policies from "lesser" candidates that end up with a non-profit amount of votes.
Now, if your long-term strategy is to keep voting against both to draw attention, you'd have to treat such an election as a special case, because if the "greater evil" wins, you cannot continue with your strategy in the next cycle at all. So it would be in your self-interest to vote for the "lesser evil".
This case is fairly clear, because the advantages and disadvantages are easy to compute, being on the same scale (affecting the power of your vote). But the same arithmetic applies to issues on different scales, too, so long as you have some sort of preferential ranking for those scales, so that you can unify them.
For example, you might want your vote to have more power, but you might also want to ensure that there's no repeat of something like the Japanese-American internment. If the latter is more important for you than the former, and it comes up as an issue in one particular election, it would be more important to vote strategically in a way to prevent it, even if it doesn't advance (and possibly sets back) your other goal.
Ranking the scales is subjective, of course. I'm not saying that this election is necessarily like that from your perspective. But I urge you to at least consider that possibility - tally up all the effects of either major candidate winning, and see how that stacks up against the beneficial effects of adopting some of the policies of "lesser" candidates in distant future, as well as probability of that adoption.
Nothing was altered. You vote your conscience.
It's when people start playing games and vote for the less bad option because they don't want someone else to win that we get these kind of ridiculous candidates. Each candidate will take ridiculous positions and then essentially blackmail the electorate with "what are you going to do? vote for the other guy?". That is not a healthy recipe for a democracy.
There are no 3rd party candidates. There are only candidates. Vote for the one you actually want. There's plenty to choose from.
Because people made a similar decision to what we're talking about now, a majority of voters saw their least favorite candidate win, which many found to be an unfortunate result.
As others mention, this is fixable if you can rank your choices, but until then...
It's very easy to dislike both candidates in play today, and certainly feels good to vote for neither.
But they are not equally bad. One candidate views large swaths of Americans as inherently illegitimate, while the other is perhaps garden-variety corrupt.
Your conscience is what stops you from doing things that feel good, but hurt others.
It also stops you from doing things that feel bad, but are rationalized backward to be the "right thing".
I assure you, both Clinton and Trump in the White House will be equally bad. Just a different kind of bad.
Vote for Gary (or Jill)!
There are "serious ramifications", to my mind, under both a Clinton or Trump presidency. Neither is any worse to me.
The best outcome of the upcoming US Presidential election, as I see it, is an eventual "major"-party winner having such weak popular support as to cause their party to distance itself from the President. A Trump or Clinton with no popular mandate and lack of support from their party is what I'd certainly like.
In my opinion, the mistake is here:
"If you don’t vote for a plausible candidate, then you lose the right to complain when you don’t like what happens."
You're placing the full responsibility on the person who, given the bad choices, with one slightly better than another, elected to not choose either. I think that responsibility in this case rests largely with those who proffer the choices. In other words, if you want, say, Jill Stein supporters to vote Democrat, well then, Democrats should 1) adopt a platform that clearly makes them a much better choice for Greens, and 2) offer a candidate that represents that platform in a convincing way. You don't "own" those voters - it's up to you to convince them to vote for you. If they aren't convinced and vote for someone else, and you lose, the fault is largely yours.
And from their perspective, they are doing the rational thing - by rejecting your candidate for not doing enough to accommodate them, they're strategically voting to push you towards either offering a better choice next time, or reforming the electoral system such that they can express their preferences in a way that affects you less (e.g. by adopting some form of transferable vote). From their perspective, they sacrifice the chance to let the "lesser evil" block the "greater evil" in one particular electoral cycle, for a very long-ended play to try to change the rules of the game in their advantage, so that at some point they can actually get "good" elected.
This isn't to say that there is a certain amount of responsibility for not anticipating indirect effect of your vote, given the constraints of the political system. Depending on how much is at stake, the strategy above is not always applicable, if the losses in the current electoral cycle would be more than anticipated long-term gains. Many people, myself included, believe that this cycle is one of those, and that the long-term goal requires allying with the "lesser evil" for the duration of the crisis.
So, multiple states are probably going to go one way or the other without much likelihood of change. I'm in ND and it will go Trump and MN will go Clinton. There are certain states that might shift (the so called battle ground states) and partial split electoral votes (ME & NE).
If you are in a battleground or split state, then they will miss your vote. If you're like me, they won't, but you really aren't voting for the win. You're voting for the next election. If a third party can get a decent percentage (like Perot in 1992), then they can get on the stage the election cycle and that will make a difference. You might actually get your better option.
In the presidential election, this is practically never going to happen, because the two-party system is a stable system[0], and they will maneuver to ensure that there is never a plurality of voters who dislike either (major-party) candidate enough not to vote for them[1].
That said, this does not hold for other races, such as Congressional races (or state-wide and local races). It's not uncommon to see an uncontested incumbent win with only a thin majority of the vote, due to undervoting. In that case, the electorate has signaled that they're ready for a primary or general election challenge, and this is often what happens in the next election cycle.
[0] in the literal sense
[1] At the national level, not locally. That is, regional parties have been successful to a degree (see: American Independent Party, which was essentially a Southern segregationist party).
For example, in the 2012 presidential election, Obama received 65,915,796 votes (51.1%), Romney received 60,933,500 votes (47.2%) and voter turn out was 54.9%[2].
--
Adjusted for "No Votes", the percentages are:
Obama: 28.5%
Romney: 26.4%
"No Vote": 45.1%
--
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
No, it's undervoting. Not voting (not casting a ballot at all) is very different from casting an empty ballot (or casting a vote of no confidence).
The difference is massive. Undervoting demonstrates active disaffection with all available candidates. Refraining from voting entirely demonstrates apathy (insufficient interest) towards the election at hand.
Yes, it is. Both write-in votes and undervotes are tracked. For example, this is how New York reports the certified results: http://vote.nyc.ny.us/html/results/results.shtml . Note that every write-in candidate is separately listed, including candidates who aren't even valid (Zephyr Teachout does not live in the 7th Congressional District, but two people wrote her in anyway). And the number of undervotes are separately listed as well.
Your local elections board/town clerk/etc. may present them differently, obviously, but they very much are required to track all votes, rather than simply ignoring all ballots that don't count towards one of the listed candidates.
A 3rd party vote despite the prevailing wisdom of them being wasted is slightly more resistant to these types of reductionist criticism, but still not as powerful as a "no confidence" vote would be.
I totally agree with voting locally, but voting for for a president.. especially this year, is a difficult to comprehend for me personally.
Couldn't help it..