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Comment by zo1 | Hacker News Reader

Normally, I'd agree with you. Except it's not a 2-party system, it just looks that way because you have two very dominant parties and the choice is always framed as such. And sure, I've even read some stories/pieces that claim that certain processes are actually biased against third parties, etc.

Truthfully, you have a few alternatives. Voting third-party, e.g. libertarian or something. Or, you could not vote at all.

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Voting third party, or not voting, wastes an opportunity to vote against the greater evil. For example, Bush wouldn't have been elected in 2000 had liberal Nader votes voted for Gore instead. If a third party was dominant on voting day, only then would they be a viable choice worth voting for.

It's much more clearly the fault of the 622 Socialist voters than the Nader voters. Had they voted for Gore instead of David McReynolds then Gore would be in office, and unlike Nader's voter mix, it's more clear that McReynolds's voters would have been Gore voters, not Bush ones.

Following your logic, Jesse Ventura would never have been governor of Minnesota as people did not know that he was a dominant candidate on voting day but was polling in third place.

Why were the 773,713 Ventura voters wrong to vote as they did? Was it because Humphrey wasn't evil enough?

You make the best choice with the info you have. If the choice isn't clear then you make a judgment call. Good points on McReynolds and Ventura. I presume that Ventura wasn't polling way below the other candidates, like Nader was in 2000. If he was, a voter couldn't be blamed for voting for someone else deemed viable.

If we had vote ranking at the national level, like Minneapolis does, this wouldn't be an issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_gubernatorial_electio... says:

> Following the primary election in September, a poll on October 20 showed Humphrey leading 35% to Coleman (34%) and Ventura (21%)

That's pretty far behind. But I'm not going to research this because you're the one trying to make the point, and you need to defend your position that it's a useful one, not switch topics to alternative voting systems.

If people followed your suggested voting tactic then Humphrey or Coleman would have been governor. They didn't, and ended up with Ventura. Not only was he a plurality winner, but from what I can tell he was a Condorcet winner too.

The voters got who they wanted. Not what the polls said was the lesser of two evils as you would have had them choose.

Let's assume that Ventura was the best choice, ignoring his poll numbers, and Humphrey was way worse than Coleman. The defense for voting for Coleman is, recent polls showed that Ventura wasn't very viable. If Ventura then loses by one vote you can take comfort that you did the best you could. You shouldn't beat yourself up because your vote prevented a rare upset from happening. It was much more likely, given the info you had, that Coleman could beat Humphrey, so that you indirectly support Humphrey by voting for Ventura. (Keep in mind that a well conducted poll will typically have a margin of error of only 3% with high confidence. It's a "black swan event" to be off by as much as in this election. Probably the poll was flawed or voters had assessed info that postdated the poll.)

I don't like making these kinds of calls, though, which is why I support vote ranking or some other way to make third parties more viable.

Yes, of course in retrospect the poll was flawed. It doesn't matter that this is a rare event - your strategy would make it even rarer. And calling this out for being a black swan event is bizarre, as you keep bringing up another black swan event; the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida.

In the 2000 election, "Gore was leading Bush and third parties with 44-42-4 among registered voters" in late October according to one poll.

In Minn. it was Humphrey 35%, Coleman 34%, and Ventura 21%. You posited "Humphrey was way worse than Coleman". That's inverted compared to 2000. Assume that a Ventura supporter considered Coleman way worse than Humphrey.

In that case, what should the Ventura supporter do? I believe you would say to vote for Humphrey. By ignoring that advice, the Ventura supporters ended up with Ventura.

> In that case, what should the Ventura supporter do? I believe you would say to vote for Humphrey.

Yes, vote for Humphrey. If Ventura then loses by one vote, you still made the best choice with the info you had. 9 times out of 10, or whatever high percentage, the 3rd place poller would've lost even with your vote, in which case you did the best by voting for the lesser of the top 2 evils.

Perhaps Ventura won because Ventura supporters felt that Coleman and Humphrey were equally worse, in which case voting for Ventura wasn't risky.

Al Gore was a participant in a White House meeting in the early years of the Clinton administration where the idea was floated of extrajudicially kidnapping a suspected terrorist, only to turn him over to a "friendly" Arab dictatorship which would undoubtedly torture him. The White House counsel was explaining to President Clinton all of the reasons that this action would be a violation of international law when Clinton turned to Gore and asked his opinion.

Gore laughed, and said, "Of course it's a violation of international law; that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass." This was persuasive to Clinton, and thus started the practice of extraordinary rendition.

(http://www.economist.com/node/11837595)

In 2000, Bush was yet to advocate for torture or to be complicit in it. The same could not be said of Gore. Who was truly the lesser of two evils, as far as voters in 2000 could tell?

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