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You’re only throwing your vote away if you vote for a candidate you don’t believe in. You’re then sending a clear message that it doesn’t matter what they do or who they put forward as long as they aren’t the other guys.

Voting for a third party tells the parties that if they don’t course correct at least a little they risk losing elections to the other guys.

That’s only a problem for the individual voter if he holds the view that this election is the last election. “We have to beat the other guy or the world is going to end.”

Contrary to the marketing, you’re not helping the other side win if you vote third party. The candidates/parties are doing that by not offering you a decent candidate.

>That’s only a problem for the individual voter if he holds the view that this election is the last election. “We have to beat the other guy or the world is going to end.”

That seems like a strawman. I for one do not think a trump presidency was a worthwhile trade for sending a vague signal to the democrats that they should "course correct".

The… what? Course correct how, stop being sometimes-milquetoast-competent and start being malevolently incompetent instead? Stop considering facts or people, just make shit up it works fine? Stop fighting, you can't win against gaslighting?

> I for one do not think a trump presidency was a worthwhile trade for sending a vague signal to the democrats that they should "course correct".

How diverse is the set of people you speak to? In the last 4 years, I've heard the following sentiment often: "I don't like the guy and his rhetoric, but at least Trump has caused fewer deaths in international conflicts than Obama did" (and with a belief that Hilary would have been worse on this metric). I do not know how true this claim is, and it's hard to get concrete numbers, but a concern over foreign policy is usually much greater amongst 3rd party voters than for Democrats and Republicans.

Don't assume everyone who didn't vote for Hilary shares your perspective, and rhetoric like yours continues to alienate independent voters.

>> I for one do not think a trump presidency was a worthwhile trade for sending a vague signal to the democrats that they should "course correct".

>In the last 4 years, I've heard the following sentiment often: "I don't like the guy and his rhetoric, but at least Trump has caused fewer deaths in international conflicts than Obama did"

That sentiment doesn't really say anything about whether it was a worthwhile trade or not. Kind of like a restaurant review that says "the food was shit and the service times were slow, but at least the waiters were nice" doesn't really mean that the restaurant is good overall, or whether they would choose the restaurant next time over a competitor.

It was quite clear the people I heard this from did think it was a worthwhile trade compared to Hilary.

> and your choice of protest is effectively taking what power you do have and throwing it away.

Voting for people you don't like and whose platform you don't agree with seems to be the very definition of throwing your vote away.

It's also funny how people tend to assume that if they hadn't voted for Stein/Johnson then those people would have voted for Democrats/Republicans. Kind of like saying "Well, if beef isn't on the menu, you'll go for milk."

But politics aside, given Firefox's market share (under 5%), using your analogy, going for Firefox is kind of futile.

>Voting for people you don't like and whose platform you don't agree with seems to be the very definition of throwing your vote away.

Why? If the other option is a party that you hate even more, your vote isn't "wasted", it's going towards making the government less bad. That has concrete benefits, as opposed to the vague signaling effect that you get by voting for a third party.

> Why? If the other option is a party that you hate even more, your vote isn't "wasted", it's going towards making the government less bad.

Except they picked an option that is a party they like. They have multiple other options.

As has been pointed out by plenty of people: If you subscribe to the "vote was wasted" mentality, at least be consistent. Your vote is wasted any time you don't live in a swing state. I've lived in extreme blue and extreme red states, and who I voted for really had no consequence at all.

>Except they picked an option that is a party they like. They have multiple other options.

What's the point in picking your favorite party if the outcome would be worse? If I think that being an astronaut will bring me the most happiness in life, I went down that career path, and end up failing (because the odds of actually being an astronaut is slim), then arguably that would be a waste of time (ignoring any additional happiness you get along the way). I'd be much better off with a career path that provides less happiness, but is more achievable.

>As has been pointed out by plenty of people: If you subscribe to the "vote was wasted" mentality, at least be consistent. Your vote is wasted any time you don't live in a swing state. I've lived in extreme blue and extreme red states, and who I voted for really had no consequence at all.

I never made the claim that voting for third party in a swing state is bad. But yes, if the state is sufficiently "safe", the disadvantage of voting third party is marginal.

> What's the point in picking your favorite party if the outcome would be worse?

If I'm in Wyoming, what's the point of voting for Biden? Should I not just go ahead and vote for Trump?

And as a I mentioned in my other comment, I have met quite a few third party voters who care greatly about things on which they believe Hilary would have been worse than Trump. Don't jump to conclusions on what is "better" for them.

> I never made the claim that voting for third party in a swing state is bad. But yes, if the state is sufficiently "safe", the disadvantage of voting third party is marginal.

My point wasn't about voting third party in a non-swing state, but about voting for the clearly losing party in said state. Why bother voting for Biden in Wyoming or Trump in Washington? That's wasting the vote. It's a bigger waste than what you are talking about. If you lean towards a third party, voting for Biden in Wyoming is the ultimate waste: You vote for someone who has no chance at winning, and he's not even aligned with your political perspective. When it comes to "wasted" votes, these vastly outnumber those voting for 3rd party candidates.

I guess growing up in a country where voting wasn't allowed does give me a different perspective than you. And people complaining incessantly about Nader/Stein voters is a pretty strong signal that their vote wasn't wasted.

> But politics aside, given Firefox's market share (under 5%), using your analogy, going for Firefox is kind of futile.

Browser market-share is like proportional representation, as opposed to a winner-take-all voting system. That completely changes things.

Firefox has much more power over the direction of the web with 5% market-share than with 1% market-share.

> and there won't be until we change how we count votes, and your choice of protest is effectively taking what power you do have and throwing it away.

You think too highly of your 'pragmatism' (my word).

Last I checked, we have 20 different choices of fast food burger joints, in nearly every major city. 30+ different choices for cereal. Why not in politics?

Why not allow a society of 330,052,960 have more than two choices for someone whom isn't just the leader of our top-ranked nation but also the leader of the free-world.

I find it bizarre that people just accept this narrative that we must 'choose the lesser of two evils'. Last I checked, if I had a choice between rat poison or nuclear radiation poisoning, I wouldn't pick one of them.

This is called a false dichotomy. Your idea to 'change within' is bizarre.

What if we told consumers of McDonalds to 'get a high level status in McD and get that ice cream machine working 24/7'? That's impractical. That's why I quoted pragmatism because it's a false pragmatism.

Free agents need to make their choices. Fail at it then try again. But guess what, the politicians will be forced to changed too, when they realize they actually have to have a more substantive approach that meets the needs of it's constituents.

Competition is good. Duopolies aren't. Not in politics. Not in the market.

Even if you live in a swing state, it's not throwing your power away. It's signaling discontent with the popular party, and it incentivizes said party to support election reform (such as ranked voting.)

If you live in a state where one of the two parties consistently wins by double digits, and vote for the other of the two, do you consider that to be throwing your vote away?

> it incentivizes said party to support election reform (such as ranked voting.)

How? Why would either party support ranked voting, and make 3rd parties actually viable? Both major parties enjoy the power and influence they have. Making it more possible for a 3rd party to actually get a candidate elected would be against their best interest, so they won't do it.

> These takes remind me of the people who voted for Jill Stein in 2016. Like, cool, I can agree it would be great if there was a viable third option—but there's not, and your choice of protest is effectively taking what power you do have and throwing it away.

In a non-swing state, how is voting third party "throwing your vote away"? In California or Massachusetts, it doesn't matter who you vote for, the Democrat will win and the Republican will lose, so why not vote third party, if you like the third party better? Likewise, in Wyoming or West Virginia, it doesn't matter who you vote for, the Republican will win and the Democrat will lose, so again, why not third party if that's what you want?

Maybe if the third party is massively popular, then it might change the outcome, even in one of those states, but that didn't happen in 2016, and I'm pretty sure it isn't happening this year either.

If you want to simply take a utilitarian point of view, a single vote has never decided a presidential election before, and it's unlikely it ever will. An individual who votes for a third party is throwing away their vote in the same way that an individual voting for any presidential candidate is throwing away their time.

You can counter with "But if everyone did that...", but third party voters could make the same counter argument.

>You can counter with "But if everyone did that...", but third party voters could make the same counter argument.

Not really. The reason why third parties are third parties is that they don't enjoy widespread support. It's not like there's a third party out there in the US that enjoys support of > 30% of americans, but nobody wants to vote for them because they're not democrat/republican.

I looked into third parties this year, and even if you know the party you voted for won't win, it isn't necessarily throwing your vote away. It turns out that if a party gets at least 5% of the popular vote, they are eligible to receive millions of dollars from the government to assist their campaign during the next election.

That is actually some incredibly useful info. Thanks for pointing that out.

You consider that a good enough incentive? That's like a rationalization, a search for a silver lining because you made the wrong choice.

Long term investments are short term investments gone wrong.

Because most states (except Maine) use first-past-the post polling, this really only takes votes away from one of the major parties, and most likely from the more moderate one you might prefer. The GP is right, until RCV exists (or other plural voting option) it’s just throwing away your vote, or worse helping the more extreme candidate you don’t like.

Edit: to be clear, first work inside your state to pass some form of plural voting, then support 3rd party candidates.

That's a great point, and "You shouldn't vote third-party, because nobody votes third-party" is a terrible argument anyway.

A better argument is that you shouldn't vote third-party because first-past-the-post voting severely penalizes it: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/

How about "You shouldn't vote third-party, because coordination problems are extremely difficult with a large number of players." ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game

> It turns out that if a party gets at least 5% of the popular vote, they are eligible to receive millions of dollars from the government to assist their campaign during the next election.

1. 5% is a very high bar in the US, going back to the 1900 election it happened to 6 people in 6 elections: Taft (as the incumbent!) and Debs in 1912, La Follette in 1932, Wallace in 1968, Anderson in 1980 and Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996. It's basically a generational event. And even Perot couldn't convert two third-places into anything lasting, what's the point of getting matching funds for the next election if you're only going to waste the money again except worse?

2. the candidate must agree to very strict spending limits, putting them at a large disadvantage for actually achieving their 5%; worse, while the federal limit is rather high it's really an expenditure limit per state based entirely on the state's population, no focusing on states where you have a chance to make an impact

3. it's only matching funds, it's not a magic purse of money

4. no matter how you slice it, the spoiler effect is, well, in effect

That 5% line would be way more useful and relevant if you guys fixed your presidential election system first, both the voting system, and everything that's around (the funding, the PACs, etc…).

Third-party candidates are not viable under FPTP, third-party candidates are even less viable when the main two candidate literally spend hundreds of millions.

> 5% is a very high bar in the US, going back to the 1900 election it happened to 6 people in 6 elections:

I don't disagree with what you have to say, but this statistic probably has the opposite effect of what you intended. It's telling me that it happened in 20% of elections since 1900. Most hard core third party voters would be pleasantly surprised to hear this ;-)

> It's telling me that it happened in 20% of elections since 1900. Most hard core third party voters would be pleasantly surprised to hear this ;-)

Then they would, objectively speaking, be complete idiots. It happens literally every major elections in other countries with better electoral systems.

For instance in NZ's 53rd General Election which just concluded, despite Labour functionally sweeping the election, four parties exceeded 5% of the vote. And while I'm not going to say that it happens every time, it's not an abnormal result at all for the country.

Furthermore, it misses the point I was underlying, which is that this only assists in funding the next election, which is only useful if you can transform this into a long-standing regular position, which has never happened. Getting 5% on an election doesn't in and of itself give you anything in the US.

> It turns out that if a party gets at least 5% of the popular vote, they are eligible to receive millions of dollars from the government to assist their campaign during the next election.

And yet, in 200+ years of elections, how many times has this happened? In my ~50 year lifetime there have only been 3 viable third party candidates for President. Of those, John Anderson got 6%, Ross Perot got ~19%, and Ralph Nader got 2.4%. If you're under 40, you've probably never heard of John Anderson. He was a Republican who turned independent to run against Reagan in 1980, so no party affiliation. Perot didn't have a party and dropped out of the race early, only to enter it again a few weeks before the election. Nader ran as a Green candidate. So at least on the Presidential stage, those rules don't seem like they help any party in reality. In very rare cases they help a particular candidate with 1 election, but even at Perot's almost 20%, there was no chance he could win.

It probably makes much more sense to vote 3rd party locally until such a time as your favored party becomes big enough to actually matter in Federal elections. But for races like President, we're stuck with our crappy system until we can get the political will to change to not be first past the post. I really wish we could do that.

> It probably makes much more sense to vote 3rd party locally until such a time as your favored party becomes big enough to actually matter in Federal elections.

In practice it often works the other way round: Left leaning Democrats or right leaning Republicans are easier to find at a local level, obviating the need for 3rd party candidates. It just gets rarer and rarer as you get to the president, and that's why at that level a lot of people vote 3rd party.

As an example, lots of people who support single-payer health care have been elected amongst the Democrats.

If Mozilla shut its doors for good and Firefox became abandonware, would not all the donations and volunteer labor look for another browser project, perhaps one with a more principled stance on user privacy? Would that not be a good thing? There are some small alternative projects out there. I don’t think a political analogy is a good one. Software is not a winner-take-all market (albeit it often is anti-competitive). You can install Nyxt even though Chrome is more popular.

The (small) gopher renaissance and Gemini are good examples of how excited some people are to change what the web IS (and consequently, make hobby-browsers an option). If you can’t view documents online without millions in software development, then maybe THAT is the real problem.

It's not a useful analogy because it derailed any discussion about OP.

Well, I thought it was useful in terms of how to think about the situation, but yes, acknowledged, it has not been useful to discussion. :(

I emailed dang to ask him to auto-collapse the comment, which seems to have helped.

> These takes remind me of the people who voted for Jill Stein in 2016.

Well, if I clicked on Download Firefox & got Chrome instead, then yeah.

The funny thing about that is if the protest voters who voted for Jill Stein had voted for Gary Johnson instead, the Libertarian party would have reached the 5% threshold necessary to become fully funded across the entire next election cycle.

That’s the step necessary to truly validate another party.