re: #67 KGxvi

Even things like universal health care and gun bans can be complicated/complex. Complex issues require complex solutions.

As someone who has voted third party more than once, I get the desire to vote for the person most inline with your world view and/or ideology. And I always find it interesting that Republicans and Democrats say the same thing about voting third party - that you’re throwing your vote away or essentially voting for the other major party nominee (this is, by the way, a terrible argument because as a voter it’s my vote, so I’m not throwing it away, and I’m not “voting for the other guy”, [1] I’m voting for the person most aligned with my beliefs - all it does is make you sound like a condescending jackass who isn’t actually listening to the person you’re “debating”).

Why is it a terrible argument (throwing your vote away)? How many third-party candidates have won a federal election? In my lifetime, I am aware of only one person who ever won (Lisa Murkowski as a write-in, then immediately rejoined the Republican Party). There’s no debate here.

It is not condescending to tell a person that their vote will not have an effect (that is a fact), but third-party voters actually condescend that they’re voting their “principles” while they watch people losing their rights as long as they think it won’t affect them personally. They were principled though.

The argument is similar to a religious argument. A fundamentalist believer says evolution by natural selection is untrue, and you’re a “jackass” for not listening to the person you’re “debating.” There is no debate there; evolution is a fact.

But unfortunately, we don’t have viable third parties in our system at present. And the system is set up in a way to quash them, which in turns leads to most [2] third parties being generally unserious entities unable to actually deal with the complex issues facing the country and the world.

See, I don’t get the contrast between #1 and #2 I bolded there. The “system” is not set up to quash third parties. Voters generally align themselves with two large groups (parties) most closely aligning to their wishes (Duverger’s Law). You state in one sentence that you’ve voted for third party candidates even though their parties are generally unserious entities.

So if they are unserious parties, why would you vote for their candidates?

“I’m not voting for lesser of two evils” argument (used by third-party supporters as a pejorative) rejects two premises:

a) “Lesser evil” can in fact be defined as “good”
b) Even if it’s not good, lesser evil is preferable than greater evil.