• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Is Voting Third Party Throwing Away Your Vote?

Is voting third party throwing away your vote?


  • Total voters
    53
I don't buy the argument that if you vote for someone who can't win you're throwing away your vote. By that logic everyone who voted for Hillary in 2016 threw away their vote. In the end they might as well have stayed home.

This is not complicated. You pick the candidate who most closely matches your views and vote for him or her. And don't sweat it if you screw it up. You're only 1 vote out of 120 million.
 
I always felt that either a republican or democrat was going to win in a Presidential election, so voting for a third party might be your personal preference but the third party candidate would likely never win the election. In my mind, voting for the lesser of the two evils if I didn't like either candidate would make more sense.

I think that except for making a statement, voting third party is almost like staying home and not voting at all, considering it won't really affect the Presidential win.

The poll question is simple...is voting third party throwing away your vote?

No I don't believe it's throwing away your vote. Last election I didn't vote either republican or democrat since I didn't care for either candidate, so on election day, I walked into the voting booth, held my nose and wrote in my name for President. That way I participated in the process and have a right to complain about how bad things are without people saying "well why didn't you vote; you have no right to complain". Btw I got 4 write-in votes!
 
It's not wasting your vote. If a third party candidate gets 10% of the vote, the major parties will start to ask how they can get those voters. I wanted to vote for Evan McMullin in 2016, but had to settle for Gary Johnson. Trump is actually less bad than I expected for the GOP.

Why did you settle for Gary Johnson?
 
All of you are saying the same thing in different ways. Regardless of the rationales, IMHO it IS a waste of your vote in a Presidential election. Not even the explanation Lord Tammerlain mentioned in Post 8 is a valid excuse, because there is no real way (as was found in 2016) to be sure that polls were right.

No one is ever going to be absolutely everything you want in a leader. NO ONE. This is why after trying Dem., Rep., and finally Libertarian, I became an independent.

The best you can do is pick the candidate you think has more stated policies and goals that you agree with than not, and whose history shows this is more likely true than not at election time.

This is not the case for Congressional and State/Local elections because those candidates directly affect you and you can literally "reach out and touch them" when they have office hours in your locale. Your vote really counts at that level to them, as does your activism.

But the President isn't that approachable, not even during campaign stops; nor is he focused on purely local concerns. A Presidential candidate is trying to reach as many people as possible across all sorts of national needs and desires. Yet that candidate will have a history, and a platform some of which you can likely get behind.

So IMO it is really important to make a valid choice when voting for President, even if it means picking the lesser of two evils. Voting "your conscience" accomplishes nothing if it is directed at a 3rd Party candidate you know has no chance of winning.

The stakes are too high. By letting a candidate who might do more harm to your goals than not get elected, as opposed to voting for one who you might not completely agree with, but is more likely to do things you want, is just passing the buck.

Vote however you wish, but it is disingenuous to assert that you bear no responsibility if you find that what you consider the GREATER of two evils ends up getting elected.

With presidential candidates the only way you can officially register your displeasure with both is to vote third party. When you choose the lesser of two evils, if that candidate wins he counts your vote as being fully for him, supporting him 100% and calls his win a mandate.

Yes, you're are letting others decide who won. But in the 2016 presidential election, I didn't give a care who won between Trump and Clinton. Equally evil. These choices will continue as long as the two major parties know you'll be voting for one of them regardless of who they nominate.

Change can come only if people try to change things. Sitting on one's butt and continue to vote for the least worst candidate or the candidate one least wants to lose, we get exactly who we deserve as president. If one doesn't want better, then continue to do vote for the lesser of two evils. Change won't come unless we actually try to change things.
 
I always felt that either a republican or democrat was going to win in a Presidential election, so voting for a third party might be your personal preference but the third party candidate would likely never win the election. In my mind, voting for the lesser of the two evils if I didn't like either candidate would make more sense.

I think that except for making a statement, voting third party is almost like staying home and not voting at all, considering it won't really affect the Presidential win.

The poll question is simple...is voting third party throwing away your vote?

Yes, and it's childish to do so in 99.99% of cases. People who want third parties to be viable need to work for it, to do the groundwork necessary to get them into Washington. Throwing temper tantrums by throwing away one's vote never works.
 
I voted yes. I distanced myself from the democratic party under clinton when he signed nafta and became an independent. However, living in florida it limited severely my choices in my state primary. I rejoined the dems and voted for bernie in the primaries and hillary in the presidential. I did not really care for hillary even though I thought she was highly qualified, maybe the most qualified of all candidates. However I find hillary to be boring and hawkish. She was not a good candidate as far as charisma. I still voted for her. Staying home in my mind was like giving two votes to trump, mine for not voting and another for a trump supporter who was certainly going to go out and vote. I feel the same way about an independent vote. The people who sat upon their high moral horse because they couldn't possibly support hillary, helped give trump the election.
 
Is Voting Third Party Throwing Away Your Vote?

nope. i've voted third party; mostly when i was a small l libertarian. however, this time around, i'd encourage anyone who has not caught the orange stupid to vote for the candidate with the greatest likelihood of beating Tang the Detestable. due to our artificially limited choices, that means voting Democratic.

as a side note, i also support radically changing our party system up to and possibly including banning political parties.
 
With presidential candidates the only way you can officially register your displeasure with both is to vote third party. When you choose the lesser of two evils, if that candidate wins he counts your vote as being fully for him, supporting him 100% and calls his win a mandate.

Yes, you're are letting others decide who won. But in the 2016 presidential election, I didn't give a care who won between Trump and Clinton. Equally evil. These choices will continue as long as the two major parties know you'll be voting for one of them regardless of who they nominate.

Change can come only if people try to change things. Sitting on one's butt and continue to vote for the least worst candidate or the candidate one least wants to lose, we get exactly who we deserve as president. If one doesn't want better, then continue to do vote for the lesser of two evils. Change won't come unless we actually try to change things.

If you waited until election time to "try to change things" then you have waited too long.

No, Clinton and Trump were not "equally evil." Each represented diametrically opposed views and goals in each area of concern; economic, international, internal governance, etc.. Nor do you share all the exact same viewpoints with anyone of your own acquaintance, not even your spouse (if you have one). You can tend to agree on most things, but there will be disagreement on others. This holds true of any third party candidate you vote for.

The idea is to balance, and compromise in the short-term if necessary, to reach eventual goals.

Yes, I've heard (and in the past have used) the "no" vote analogy. Much good it did me when a candidate who was the greater of two evils ended up obtaining office. I could sit back on my "code" while bad things still happened.

In any case, I've offered my opinion. Vote as you choose, but IMO those who choose as you do fail to see that such "principles" while admirable usually fail to prevent the very evils they seek to avoid.
 
Considering nearly all third party voters vote to protest the two-party system I do not consider it 'throwing away their vote.' Whether it is a 'good strategy' of protest is another question for debate. Personally, I think a voter has to be more pragmatic in swing states where those third party votes could potentially give the state to the greater of the two evil.
 
No

Voting in what has become of our citizenry and political election process is throwing your vote away
 
If you waited until election time to "try to change things" then you have waited too long.

No, Clinton and Trump were not "equally evil." Each represented diametrically opposed views and goals in each area of concern; economic, international, internal governance, etc.. Nor do you share all the exact same viewpoints with anyone of your own acquaintance, not even your spouse (if you have one). You can tend to agree on most things, but there will be disagreement on others. This holds true of any third party candidate you vote for.

The idea is to balance, and compromise in the short-term if necessary, to reach eventual goals.

Yes, I've heard (and in the past have used) the "no" vote analogy. Much good it did me when a candidate who was the greater of two evils ended up obtaining office. I could sit back on my "code" while bad things still happened.

In any case, I've offered my opinion. Vote as you choose, but IMO those who choose as you do fail to see that such "principles" while admirable usually fail to prevent the very evils they seek to avoid.

I did not try to see to avoid evil. I recognized evil. I failed to support evil. Apparently you did in one way or the other. When one is satisfied with evil, even if it is the lesser of two evils, one is still supports evil.
 
I always felt that either a republican or democrat was going to win in a Presidential election, so voting for a third party might be your personal preference but the third party candidate would likely never win the election. In my mind, voting for the lesser of the two evils if I didn't like either candidate would make more sense.

I think that except for making a statement, voting third party is almost like staying home and not voting at all, considering it won't really affect the Presidential win.

The poll question is simple...is voting third party throwing away your vote?

That is akin to saying voting for a blue candidate in a majority red state/district (or vice versa) is throwing your vote away. Simply because your preferred POTUS candidate has little chance to win is not a valid reason (excuse?) for voting differently. One of the main problems with the winner take all nonsense for EC votes (done in most states) is that it creates the illusion that any individual vote not cast for the winning POTUS candidate was "wasted". It makes no sense that all of a state's EC votes go to the POTUS candidate who won 40% of the vote simply because the majority of the votes in that state were split 30% to 30% among opposition candidates.
 
I always felt that either a republican or democrat was going to win in a Presidential election, so voting for a third party might be your personal preference but the third party candidate would likely never win the election. In my mind, voting for the lesser of the two evils if I didn't like either candidate would make more sense.

I think that except for making a statement, voting third party is almost like staying home and not voting at all, considering it won't really affect the Presidential win.

The poll question is simple...is voting third party throwing away your vote?

I wish you'd offered a third poll option: "Sometimes yes; sometimes no." I have voted third-party on the local and state level and surely will again. I'm open to voting third-party in a Presidential election. But much depends on the particular political moment of the time. Unless an outstanding third-party candidate emerges, one with a real chance of winning, I don't want to give aid to a main-party candidate whose platform I oppose, and that's what a third-party vote may do.
 
I suppose that is one way to look at it. A way that completely ignores my point that NO ONE is going to be everything you want. So whomever you vote for you are likely to be voting for what YOU think is the "lesser of all evils."

I'm sure you'll couch it in more positive terms though. I know I do. ;)

I don't see how voting in puppets bought and paid for by the 1% who fund both parties will ever solve the problems of the majority of hard working taxpayers. Only if our interest coincide with the agenda of the rich and powerful will they ever do anything for us. The only difference today vs when our founding fathers were around is the people had a choice between electing the rich and powerful back then while today we elect bought and paid for puppets of the rich and powerful.
 
Depends, I think all third parties in the US seem to be putting the cart before the horse. They are going for the big one right away, the presidential election. They should really try to build a following in one geographic area then expand to state level, then Congress, and try to build momentum from there for the presidential, sure it will take along time maybe even several generations but I don't see any other way it could be done.

In the mean time it is just throwing it away unless that third party has an actual chance.

Example:

While the Greens in the EU and UK have invested well over twenty years building a solid base of support, all the way from council to parliament level, here's what Greens in the USA do...they HIBERNATE for 3.5 years, then six months before the POTUS election they trot out Jill Stein, who sucks up to Putin and thinks WiFi can kill your children, then after the election they revert back to a PO Box and an 800 number, back into hibernation.

There are no Green state senators or assemblymen, no Green House reps or US Senators, not even a Green dog catcher.
But sure, voting third party isn't thro....oh never mind.
 
Definitely not. But it does makes sense to be strategic about it.

If you live in a state where your vote doesn't count anyway (e.g. CA for president or Senate), then you might as well vote for a third party that better represents your views. The only way we'll break the 2-party system is if other parties or independents start to look more viable, so that really good candidates will run under them instead of the two horrible parties we have now (or not at all).

On the other hand, if there's likely to be a tight race for any election, then you should consider choosing the lesser of two evils among the main 2 parties.
 
I always felt that either a republican or democrat was going to win in a Presidential election, so voting for a third party might be your personal preference but the third party candidate would likely never win the election. In my mind, voting for the lesser of the two evils if I didn't like either candidate would make more sense.

I think that except for making a statement, voting third party is almost like staying home and not voting at all, considering it won't really affect the Presidential win.

The poll question is simple...is voting third party throwing away your vote?

The lesser of two evils is still evil. Perhaps if it's just a one-off you can get away with it. But if time and time again the choice is "lesser of two evils", then you end up in the same place regardless; all you're arguing is how fast you're going to get there. Voting third party is absolutely not throwing your vote away. The Republic works when you vote for the candidate you believe is best for the job and best represents your personal political philosophy.

Furthermore, most elections come down to 50/50 split + noise. To affect an election, you only have to affect the noise. If enough people aggregate votes into a third party so that one of the major parties cannot win, then that party has to move it's platform closer to the third party in order to recapture votes.

If one doesn't like the current status quo, then voting for the status quo will do nothing to affect that. While it's true that many don't vote third party, I think it's because most have fallen into the false dichotomy that they have to vote for an evil. But if we'd vote honestly and for whom we feel best and most qualified, we'd have an easier time regulating the system.
 
Depends on what you see as the roll of voting. I havent voted major party since 2003 and dont see a reason to change that. If enough people would crawl out of the GOP/Rat party sewer and vote independent they might feel the need to act responsibly. But the idiots that vote blindly for their parties wont and so the parties wont either.

Go back to the 60s and Malcolm Xs words:



That is 100% correct...but its not limited to blacks and their bloc vote for democrats...its true for all races supporting both parties.
 
The lesser of two evils is still evil. Perhaps if it's just a one-off you can get away with it. But if time and time again the choice is "lesser of two evils", then you end up in the same place regardless; all you're arguing is how fast you're going to get there. Voting third party is absolutely not throwing your vote away. The Republic works when you vote for the candidate you believe is best for the job and best represents your personal political philosophy.

Furthermore, most elections come down to 50/50 split + noise. To affect an election, you only have to affect the noise. If enough people aggregate votes into a third party so that one of the major parties cannot win, then that party has to move it's platform closer to the third party in order to recapture votes.

If one doesn't like the current status quo, then voting for the status quo will do nothing to affect that. While it's true that many don't vote third party, I think it's because most have fallen into the false dichotomy that they have to vote for an evil. But if we'd vote honestly and for whom we feel best and most qualified, we'd have an easier time regulating the system.
Romney was vilified for his 47% comment...but he wasnt wrong. 47% of the voters on BOTH sides of the aisle cannot be swayed and there is no real sense in trying to go after their vote...because 94% of the country that bother to vote WILL vote along their party line. Hell...most of the people that vote dont know the positions either side is taking, often mistake words of their own candidate as attributed to the other guy, and dont bother reading or understanding the ballot initiatives. The political battle is for the 6% that CAN be swayed.
 
I always felt that either a republican or democrat was going to win in a Presidential election, so voting for a third party might be your personal preference but the third party candidate would likely never win the election. In my mind, voting for the lesser of the two evils if I didn't like either candidate would make more sense.

I think that except for making a statement, voting third party is almost like staying home and not voting at all, considering it won't really affect the Presidential win.

The poll question is simple...is voting third party throwing away your vote?

Voting is not always about "winning" the office. For some, the "win" is supporting someone they believe closer matches their beliefs; for some, the "win" may be helping a neophyte movement get noticed, matching funds, etc.

We are free to do with what our vote whatever we like. We don't get to decided how other people vote.
 
I always felt that either a republican or democrat was going to win in a Presidential election, so voting for a third party might be your personal preference but the third party candidate would likely never win the election. In my mind, voting for the lesser of the two evils if I didn't like either candidate would make more sense.

I think that except for making a statement, voting third party is almost like staying home and not voting at all, considering it won't really affect the Presidential win.

The poll question is simple...is voting third party throwing away your vote?

Voting for either of the candidates selected by the Oligarchic interests that control the two party machine is my opinion of a wasted vote. Any third party is a viable alternative for real change.
/
 
I wish I didn't have to say yes, but the only true answer is definitely yes. It's possible for a 3rd party to gain a House or Senate seat, but not the Presidency. The two major parties don't leave much room for anything to butt in - which is why 3rd parties tend to get like 5% of the vote, as opposed to the 40%+ that the two major parties receive.

Politicians are aware of this, as well - it's why Bernie is running for President as a Democrat.

The two major parties have everyone so scared of the "other side" it keeps people voting for them no matter what they do or who they run. It is why a 3rd party has no shot.
 
I always felt that either a republican or democrat was going to win in a Presidential election, so voting for a third party might be your personal preference but the third party candidate would likely never win the election. In my mind, voting for the lesser of the two evils if I didn't like either candidate would make more sense.

I think that except for making a statement, voting third party is almost like staying home and not voting at all, considering it won't really affect the Presidential win.

The poll question is simple...is voting third party throwing away your vote?

Depending on the third party's candidate, it usually helps one of the "big2". Ross Perot was a conservative candidate. He siphoned votes off of the Republican candidate, giving the win to Slick Willie. The rest is history. So a third party is good for one party and bad for the other. That's why Bernie is running as a dem. He's a socialist, but if he ran as one, he would siphon votes from the dem candidate giving the election to Trump.
 
The two major parties have everyone so scared of the "other side" it keeps people voting for them no matter what they do or who they run. It is why a 3rd party has no shot.

I'd consider that more of an issue with education and the media than anything. If people weren't so dumb, the scare tactics wouldn't work.
 
Example:

While the Greens in the EU and UK have invested well over twenty years building a solid base of support, all the way from council to parliament level, here's what Greens in the USA do...they HIBERNATE for 3.5 years, then six months before the POTUS election they trot out Jill Stein, who sucks up to Putin and thinks WiFi can kill your children, then after the election they revert back to a PO Box and an 800 number, back into hibernation.

There are no Green state senators or assemblymen, no Green House reps or US Senators, not even a Green dog catcher.
But sure, voting third party isn't thro....oh never mind.

This what I mean. They don't understand you have to build momentum.
 
Back
Top Bottom