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Comment by jhugg | Hacker News Reader

Hypothetical: Candidate A is a genuine sociopath and serial killer. Candidate B was indicted for tax-fraud, but got off for BS reasons. Candidate C runs a non-profit and loves kittens, but has no chance in hell of winning.

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.

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I don't see it that way. It's not on me that 5X% of the people who voted voted for the serial killer. That's on them. If that is who the population wants, then that is what they will get.

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.

As I said earlier, in 2000 people voted for Nader and its a pretty direct path to a trillion dollar war that cost thousands of American lives, cost hundreds of thousands of non-American lives, and led semi-directly to ISIS.

I don't blame Nader voters, because they didn't realize what could happen. Voters in 2016 have no such excuse.

Why can't we blame the democratic candidate, who was so unappealing to progressive voters that they preferred Nader? I would suggest it is the fault of that candidate (and his party) that they lost the election. No one is entitled to anyone else's votes, regardless of how bad the competition is. Voters have agency, and have no compulsion to vote for one specific candidate to avoid another evil one (that specific candidate still must earn those votes).

Yep. It's a myth that Nader lost Gore the election. In Florida, 10x as many registered Democrats voted for Bush as voted for Nader.

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.

> Yep. It's a myth that Nader lost Gore the election. In Florida, 10x as many registered Democrats voted for Bush as voted for Nader.

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.

I don't blame Nader voters either, because they didn't cause any of that, just like how they didn't contribute to Kim Jong-un being in the position he is.

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 long-term solution to this, of course, is the Alternative Vote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE

If you vote for Candidate B just so that Candidate A doesn't get into office does that make me culpable for all of the bad things that Candidate B does in office?

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?

I don't think so, no.

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.

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