Comment by fredleblanc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fredleblanc | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Not to be that guy, but there are generally other candidates than just the main two. Most seem to ignore third-party candidates because they'll never win, but that quickly becomes a vicious circle: they probably won't win so people don't vote for them, it looks like they have little support so people won't bother, they continue to earn 1-3% of votes.

That's not to say third party people are the greatest either, personally, a candidate needs to earn my vote, not just be the lesser of evils. What I'm saying is that if a non-main candidate interests you, I think it's worth your time to vote. The same way it's nice to tell someone on the Internet that you appreciate them.

There are a lot of hardworking people trying to make the world better, they just don't have the funding, pull, or connections to make it happen. But as we've been seeing with recent protests: if there are enough people fed up with the current system, and people back another option, the (US) government does seem to still listen to its people.

And even if they don't win, third parties can influence policies of the main two. The main two want to avoid splitting voters across themselves and similar-but-different third parties. Third parties gaining a significant percentage can pull the main parties in their direction to avoid losing those voters again.

Yes, absolutely!

We had a case of this in Massachusetts this year in our governor's race. One of the third party candidates did so well during the first debate that all of the third-party candidates were then blocked from future debates. Of course, there's nothing exactly admitting that, but it seems like it could hardly be a coincidence. (In fact, the third-party candidate that did well was _uninvited_ from a future debate that he had already accepted an invitation to.)

Bonus: he ended up earning the minimum 5% vote needed to establish a new political party[0] in the state!

[0]: http://www.unitedindependent.org/

> they probably won't win so people don't vote for them, it looks like they have little support so people won't bother...

This is a symptom of first past the post voting. CGPGrey does a great series of simple videos demonstrating alternative voting methods that I found particularly enjoyable[0].

[0]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo&list=PLEcHCTVM79B...

See also http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/. But while we're looking at voting systems, let's not forget the issue at hand.

Look up the history of the Greens in Germany they went from insignificant nth contender in the 1980s to ruling party - simply by slowly gathered the votes of discontent from people fed up with the two main parties. Not voting is not a strategy; should be mandatory in my opinion.

I agree that too many in the country don't exercise their right to vote, but I wouldn't take away their right to abstain. But, I mean, that could be solved by having an `abstain` option on the ballot itself.

Here in Australia it's mandatory to "vote" or you get a crappy little fine, few hundred, who cares. But here's the clever bit, voting just consists of showing up and giving your name so they can cross you off the list. You can take the ballot, and just shove it in the box blank. Perfectly legal "abstain" vote in a country where you have to vote.

don't make it mandatory. we're lucky some people don't vote

Reply on news.ycombinator.com