Let's all remember this kind of thing the next time we are inspired by a candidate's promises or rhetoric.
"Although our country has thwarted new terrorist attacks since 2001, those threats do persist. That is why our reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was so vital, and why the Democrats' opposition to it was so wrong."
Hmm, sounds like they were promising more of the same.
If your suggestion is voting for an independent, is there a realistic scenario where an independent candidate could get elected in the United States?
Do you know about the 5% funding rule in the US? Why not vote for a third party?
Because it does nothing.
If only we required a hard majority of Americans to vote for somebody for them to win, then abstaining from voting could become an option with teeth. Then candidates would have to convince the public that they should vote for them, rather than just convincing the public not to vote for the other guy. Abstaining is, in my opinion, a respectable choice. Any vote is a vote of confidence in the system; if everybody who didn't like any of the candidates just stayed home instead of "voting for the lesser evil", then the farce that is our democracy would be made plain.
Abstaining isn't the only interesting option though. Another option is enfranchisement where instead of voting on the behalf of yourself you instead vote on the behalf of one of the billions of disenfranchised. National elections in developed countries don't just affect the nation in question but rather the world. The lives of many in other countries literally hangs in the balance during American elections but they are not permitted to participate. Perhaps worse, many Americans are not permitted to vote just because they are not recognized as 'citizens'. Next election, perhaps instead of abstaining, vote on the behalf of somebody who is not represented. An individual doing this is not going to change anything but a national enfranchisement campaign has the potential to be subversive.
We need a discussion on what being a democracy actually means.
Unfortunately, the American political system is not equipped to train and empower the type of enlightened leader(s) who can initiate and lead this type of discussion.
Interesting, but it comes with a bunch of conditions (these are for 2008):
- General election spending limited to $84.1 million
- Primary spending limited to $42.05 million
Quick google search revealed that in 2008, the dem/con candidate spent almost $1B each: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aerix...
I'm not sure the public funding will help! Certainly it might get your foot in the door for one election cycle, but it won't win an election without a lot of grassroots support.
How about a scenario in which all the people who claim to be voting for the lesser of two evils reevaluate their own defeatist attitude? If the only thing stopping a significant enough percentage of people from voting for a 3rd party is the perceived inability to win, then it's just a coordination problem.
It would be interesting to see a poll asking "If you knew the candidate you voted for could win, who would you vote for?"
Another argument for voting according to your principles is that based on the electoral college system, only people living in a few states actually contribute to the outcome of the election with their votes, so if you don't live in one of those states, you might as well show your support for someone you don't consider to be evil.
I think that's a bit idealistic. A lot of people voted Ralph Nader in 2000, and while it's up for debate whether this cost Gore the election, I think many voters are now turned off the idea.
In a close con/dem race, I think many would rather have some of their positions represented by the resulting POTUS than shoot for the moon and risk "splitting the vote". One of the major parties would have to do some truly outrageous shit and alienate their base before this dynamic changes.
For me, recent events qualify.
Voting is a minor part of engagement. It is not a replacement for everything else. Voting for the greater evil may be good strategy sometimes, even, if it is to punish a party and insist that we need better candidates, or elected officers which will follow through on things.
I believe any rational actor would behave as Bush and Obama have during their terms in office. For this reason I can't justify voting for a third party candidate, either, because I still believe they'd act similarly, and with less inherent power, they'd be more easily swayed into acting irrationally (being president helps a great deal in working within your respective national committee, and an independent wouldn't have that support).
The only conclusion I'm forced to face is the undeniable statistical fact that, individually, it doesn't matter if I vote at all.
Citations needed. Politicians have had widely varying behavior in the past. It depends on what the climate created by the citizenry is.
Else it's just a random statement. I believe X. Why would anyone care about my belief?
Furthermore, there has never been a leader of the US who has been able to avoid killing people through military action. Every president in the history of the US has blood on his hands. Arguably, every leader of every country does as well. From Nelson Mandella to Stalin, to Churchill to Sulla, from Nefertiti to William Wallace - all leaders kill people, spy on people, and break their country's laws.
What reason would I have to believe a third party candidate could buck literally thousands of years of corruption, privacy violations and death? It's in the damned job description - leading is immoral, regardless of what party affiliation the leader carries.
So would literally every action taken by Bush or Obama be repeated? No. But you can be damn sure that the things we all have huge problems with would be, by any human being on the planet put into the positions they were put into. They're acting rationally, given the information they've got.
But even if he did, not "every leader" has done those things to the same extent, to the same kind of people, and for the same reasons.
You asked for an explanation, I gave you one. I'm uninterested in talking with you specifically any further, so that's basically as far as we're going to go.
However, I still think it makes sense to vote for third party candidates, if only to force mainstream parties to realize that some of their positions will lose them significant numbers of votes.
In fact, I'd argue that your argument actually supports voting for 3rd party candidates as long as the expectation is that those votes will impact which issues get focus, and not the expectation that the 3rd party candidate will actually win an election.
It is quite likely that if Obama didn't have so many blind loyalists in his pocket that he'd actually worry about being impeached over his recently revealed abuses. Voting 3rd party tells the major parties that issues matter more than loyalty and that we're not serfs.
Impeachment is a violent disruption of that contract, and it makes zero sense to impeach a man who, as I just said, is doing the exact same things every other leader does/has done since the dawn of history.
Voting 3rd party pretends like that 3rd party candidate wouldn't be guilty of exactly the same violations if, by some miracle, the person were to be elected. It's a lie voters tell themselves, and it's worse than voting for a DNC/RNC candidate because it demonstrates either a depressing and dangerous naivety, or a malicious and malignant sense of superiority over others.
Voting for a single issue (to get attention, or to get your view imposed on others) is the act of a fanatic. No single issue is that important. Period. Furthermore, voting is the very last thing that happens in a campaign. Your 3rd party selection will be completely and entirely ignored once the results come in. No cause saw a significant change in public awareness because of a 3rd party candidate.
Voting is a formality, elections are a formality, etc. Democracy is also a formality. There have been many cases of kind autocrats who are loved by the people and who govern with their consent.
Many in the US are biased by the allure of democratic formalities and lose sight of the larger principle which is consent. Whether you vote or not, if you do not dissent then you consent to whatever is happening. This is true in any kind of regime, democratic or not.
I'd argue that it is the duty of all citizens to dissent aggressively when leaders act badly. This can take the form of voting behavior, public or private discourse, letter writing, fundraising, boycotting, civil disobedience, etc.
The contract between the people and their leaders should be reevaluated every hour of every day, not just viewed in retrospect after the 4 year term is over. Impeachment is an extreme measure, and too much of it is bad for the stability of our institutions, but the threat of it should be very real.
But just as stability is important for our institutions, so is trust. If the people cannot trust the president's words, that is just as large a threat to our stability as an impeachment proceeding.
We have granted our leaders the privilege of keeping some state secrets. They have taken that trust and created a massive surveillance infrastructure that goes well beyond what anyone imagined and well beyond the intent of the law. Now it is time to reduce the level of trust and dial back the excesses.
So far our leaders have shown no inclination to engage in a mutually respectful dialog with the public about the excesses (or about the crimes revealed by the leaks, for that matter). This conduct weakens our institutions more than most people realize. It is not only profoundly undemocratic, it is also profoundly disrespectful of the democracy that so many have fought to achieve.
"The Plurality and Hare methods both favour extremists: they can squeeze out a moderate candidate. The blue candidate, stuck in the middle between the red and green candidates, will win when public opinion is moderate with the Approval and Condorcet methods, but has no chance of winning in the Plurality and Hare methods."
/me writes in tptacek / cperciva
>>If your suggestion is voting for an independent, is there a realistic scenario where an independent candidate could get elected in the United States?
Do you feel disenfranchised yet?
What voting does is it gives bite to all the rest of the political action one does during a term of elected office. It is what makes political speech effective. It does not replace it.
And the world will be full of crotchety old bastards like myself. Yay!