The StarDestroyer BBS 2012 US Presidential Election Poll

[Channel72]

Jill Stein isn't Romney either, you idiot. You not only completely missed Grumman's point, you just announced Obama to be the best candidate by fiat offhandedly, as if there were no question in your mind that he is the only sane choice.

The argument is that voting for Jill Stein may enhance Romney's chance of winning, by sucking away votes for Obama, since the Green Party platform overlaps more with the Democrat platform than it does the Republican. That's simply a very real, potential risk you need to weigh when voting, just like it's possible that votes for Nader cost Gore the election in 2000, giving us the BEST PRESIDENT EVER: George W. Bush.

I've discussed this with you before, and I admire your idealism - but we don't live in an ideal world where principles mean everything; sometimes you need to "play the field" when considering who to vote for.

[eion]

Formless, by voting for Jill Stein, or any other more progressive candidate, rather than Obama you are essentially giving Romney one more vote. Our first past the post system doesn't care who gets the majority of votes, only who gets the most votes. The system simply doesn't allow for more than two parties. If a third party starts to get traction, like the Greens in 2000 or the Reform Party in 1996 and manages to cut off some votes from the flanks of one of the other parties, then the Party most ideologically opposed to the new party wins: The Republicans in 2000 and the Democrats in 1996, respectively. It's a broken system that will be incredibly difficult to change because it favors the two major parties greatly. They don't want competition from their flanks, and so seek to either stomp it out or absorb the competitors into the party to ensure parity.

You want your vote for Jill Stein to actually mean something? Well then we need an instant runoff voting system in America. Good luck getting any support for that in Congress or the White House, though. Until then you are wasting your vote. All this idealism gets in the way of actually making sure the better (NOT BEST because there are only two likely options) candidate wins. Broken already gave the No 1 factor in any vote for President: The Supreme Court. If Romney wins the court will likely be packed with two more ultraconservative Justices and our country will be fucked, not for 4 or 8 years, but for DECADES.

If you want idealism, go watch the West Wing. This is politics, and it rarely leaves a good taste in your mouth.

[Formless]

The argument is that voting for Jill Stein may enhance Romney's chance of winning, by sucking away votes for Obama, since the Green Party platform overlaps more with the Democrat platform than it does the Republican. That's simply a very real, potential risk you need to weigh when voting, just like it's possible that votes for Nader cost Gore the election in 2000, giving us the BEST PRESIDENT EVER: George W. Bush.

NO, you shitweasel. We got George Bush because people voted for George Bush. Furthermore, for the last couple decades, no candidate has actually gotten the majority vote... unless you consider "apathy" to be the majority vote (unfortunately, "nobody" will never take office, so we got Gorge Bush instead). Don't blame democracy in action for your own irresponsible voting habits, nor for encouraging people to think their opinions are irrelevant in democratic elections (hence why nobody votes). Lying by analysis is still lying, and I will have none of it.

[Channel72]

NO, you shitweasel. We got George Bush because people voted for George Bush.

Yeah, and guns don't kill people - PEOPLE kill people. Now that we've got that meaningless platitude out of the way, perhaps we can discuss real world strategic solutions to real world problems?

Will you at least admit that, hypothetically, if Ralph Nader didn't run in 2000, it's likely Gore would have gotten more votes?

[eion]

Formless, you do realize that Gore actually won the national popular vote in 2000, right? I'm not sure you really understand how the American election system actually works. By definition a majority of people voted for someone other than Bush. And if we look at Florida, where the margin was 537 votes between the two leading candidates, and add on the next two leading candidates (Nadar and Buchanon, both potential spoilers in that state) to the leader’s totals, we see that Gore would have won by nearly 80,000 votes.

FPTP doesn't work, and never has. It fails by nearly every measure of what constitutes a fair voting system, and so to try to vote idealistically in a FPTP is naïve at best. Our founders envisioned a country without political parties, and that lasted all of 8 years because of our voting system.

[Formless]

Platitudes? Is "logic" just a word to you two? Look, if any vote that isn't a vote for the candidate that ultimately made office can be considered a wasted vote, then everyone who voted for Al Gore is just as responsible for Gorge Bush getting into office as all the people who voted for Nader. Or even responsible for not getting Nader into office. Or even for failing to get Gore into office-- even though they voted for him! You are literally validating the saying "Americans love a winner" as a valid argument for who to vote for! Hence why I say that it is a lie by analysis-- its only purpose is to encourage people to either not vote because their political beliefs are of secondary importance to Real Politiks, or to vote for your candidate because you cannot imagine what you will do if you lose an election. OH MY GOD, NO ONE EVER LOST AN ELECTION BEFORE! WHATEVER SHALL YOU DO???? HOWEVER SHALL YOU KEEP ON LIVING???

You are actually saying that the system is broken NOT because we have a first past the post system. NOT for having the electoral college (yes, asshole who calls himself eion, I do know our goddamn electoral system. Do you?). NOT because of corporate and other money influences. Not because of advertising. Not even because the voting population is idiotic or flawed in some way. Your argument is literally saying that the flaw in the American Democratic Process is that only one candidate gets to win in an election, and anyone who didn't vote for him might as well have stayed home on election day! What. The. Fuck. I would call this a post hoc fallacy, but frankly I smell an ulterior motive in the air.

[Executor32]

Jill Stein's politics overlap with my own more than Obama's do, but I'm still going to vote for Obama. Sure, I could be all idealistic and vote for Jill Stein, but sometimes you have to put idealism aside in favor of practicality.

[Formless]

And by the way, eion, the system does allow for more than two parties, just not in the way you think it does. Look up the "Whigs" on wikipedia. Once upon a time, the Republican party was itself a third party that no one had ever heard of. Then it overtook the Whigs, and because one of the two dominate parties in America. There is nothing about the FPTP system that prevents this from happening again... except the will of the voters. You. This is predicated on a whole shift in party politics that transcends any one election-- it requires politicians and voters from a third party over a period of time to flock to that party until they overtake a major party in influence and offices held. Hence the comments I have made about how the importance of the presidential election cycle is overblown.

Is that a perfect system? Hell no. But it does demonstrate the problem with your own arguments-- that even in the system we have, your arguments are still false, illogical, and irresponsible.

[Channel72]

Look, if any vote that isn't a vote for the candidate that ultimately made office can be considered a wasted vote, then everyone who voted for Al Gore is just as responsible for Gorge Bush getting into office as all the people who voted for Nader.

That's a strawman. The argument is NOT that any vote for a non-winning candidate is wasted. The argument is that any vote for a candidate who REALISTICALLY has no CHANCE of winning is a wasted vote, and could even backfire by electing a candidate whose views are even further removed from the desired platform. You need to present convincing arguments that Jill Stein has ANY chance of winning in the 2012 election, otherwise you're just dancing around the issue here, which is that a compelling argument can be made that Jill Stein votes could potentially help Romney get elected, (which in turn could be disastrous for the reasons outlined above involving Supreme Court Justices.)

You are actually saying that the system is broken NOT because we have a first past the post system. NOT for having the electoral college (yes, asshole who calls himself eion, I do know our goddamn electoral system. Do you?). NOT because of corporate and other money influences. Not because of advertising. Not even because the voting population is idiotic or flawed in some way. Your argument is literally saying that the flaw in the American Democratic Process is that only one candidate gets to win in an election, and anyone who didn't vote for him might as well have stayed home on election day! What. The. Fuck. I would call this a post hoc fallacy, but frankly I smell an ulterior motive in the air.

Meaningless strawman. Please take the time to reassess the actual argument myself and eion are making here, and then readdress it.

[Channel72]

As an aside, one potential argument I might accept for voting third party is to simply help visibly increase the credibility of the desired candidate, which may perhaps encourage people in future elections to vote third party. However, this is a long term strategy for which there is no real means of assessing effectiveness - whereas right here and now in 2012, a Romney administration has predictable and very well understood negative consequences in the immediate and long-term future.

[Lonestar]

Mitt Romney.

According to some people it doesn't matter which of the two big parties get elected, so let's put this to a test, I say.

[Formless]

That's a strawman. The argument is NOT that any vote for a non-winning candidate is wasted. The argument is that any vote for a candidate who REALISTICALLY has no CHANCE of winning is a wasted vote.

Its no strawman, you moron. You just don't get it. Its based on the fact that your vote actually does something besides look cool on paper. IT DETERMINES WHO ACTUALLY HAS A CHANCE OF WINNING AN ELECTION. It, and thousands of other pieces of paper actually get tallied up, and your choice of voting for Obama will be factored into the very same numbers that you are using to say whether or not he is "electable". MY argument is that your statements combined with your voting habits together make for a self-justifying choice on your part. In future elections, how are you going to determine that a third party candidate has no chance of winning? Because you didn't vote for them in this election; and because you didn't, they didn't get in. They didn't get in, they must not be the winning candidate, hence you will never vote for them until you change your voting habits and the voting habits of those around you, because they are the root cause of your voting habits. Which you will never do because you are convinced that this is a valid way of determining who to vote for. Its a political feedback loop, and claiming that it is a valid algorithm for determining who you will vote for is therefor illogical. Hence you are lying by omission and analysis.

My analysis which you call a strawman takes the pragmatic view that actions are a truer statement of what people believe than their words (and by the way, do either of you retards know the first thing about Pragmatism as a philosophy?), and taking that to its logical conclusion. You apparently would have blamed yourselves for Gorge Bush if you had voted for Nader (and I do know people like that in REAL LIFE), because if I vote for Jill you claim I am voting for Romney by proxy... even though those two candidates are like night and day. Therefore, either you have an irrational hatred of third parties because the democrats who voted for Gore are exempt from the same blame that Nader's voters get from you, or you actually would blame yourselves for voting for a democrat if somehow a Republican gets in office. Either way, you are an idiot and a liar, and shouldn't be blaming me for strawmanning when you can't get straight what I am actually arguing.

We're done here. You have not changed your stance since the last time we had this discussion, and I don't feel like hammering at a Wall of Ignorance again. If I have to repeat the same few arguments over and over and over, in the same thread or in multiple threads, with the same people, its not worth it.

[eion]

You said:

We got George Bush because people voted for George Bush.

I showed you that most people DIDN'T vote for George Bush. You mentioned nothing about that relic the Electoral College, so I decided to keep things simple for you, since your brain is unable to grasp that your voting for Jill Stein will make the outcome you want least more likely: Romney winning. You want to go toe to toe on electoral procedures, be my guest. I can break down the electoral results in Florida if you like and show that the Green party ripped a victory from Al Gore, handed it to Bush, and then whined about Bush winning for 8 years.

Yes, I like a winner. You know why? Because winners actually get to govern. And I want the best President, which means in our system I have to vote for the best campaigner who I think supports as many of my values as possible and will still win. And you know what, that's Obama. Jill Stein, while a nice person with some good ideas, has won one election in her life: Town Meeting Representative of the town of Town of Lexington in which she garnered 539 votes and 20.6% of the total votes. She has no national experience, no foreign policy experience, has about $400,000 in the bank, and perhaps most importantly of all: no chance. None. We're not talking about an experienced, but underfunded candidate like Ted Kennedy. We’re not talking about a well-funded, but crazy candidate like Rose Perot. We are talking about another fucking Ralph Nadar who doesn’t live in the real world and thinks that by punishing Democrats with another loss the Greens will eventually get their way.

I remain unconvinced by your arguments and insulted by your naiveté. Stop being a child. If Obama loses it will be in some small part due to idiots like you thinking you can change the system by voting your heart instead of your head. Until then, go sit at the kiddie table and let the adults talk.

[Formless]

1) The post right after the post I was responding to, you made the direct statement that "Formless, by voting for Jill Stein, or any other more progressive candidate, rather than Obama you are essentially giving Romney one more vote." Therefore, don't complain about the Electoral college now, that's moving the goalposts, you dishonest prick.

2) I was replying to Channel72 in that post, so fuck the hell off and learn to read.

3) In context, the argument that quote was part of was predicated on throwing Channel72's own stupid reasoning back in his face. So stop cherrypicking, and once again... learn to read.

4) One of the reasons I said his argument was stupid was in fact that most voters didn't vote at all, and the problems with the Electoral College just make that argument stronger.

5) There can be a problem with the Electoral College and a problem with your way of thinking and voting habits. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Especially if you think your vote matters despite the Electoral College. If you don't, why the hell are we having this argument?

[eion]

And by the way, eion, the system does allow for more than two parties, just not in the way you think it does. Look up the "Whigs" on wikipedia. Once upon a time, the Republican party was itself a third party that no one had ever heard of. Then it overtook the Whigs, and because one of the two dominate parties in America. There is nothing about the FPTP system that prevents this from happening again... except the will of the voters. You. This is predicated on a whole shift in party politics that transcends any one election-- it requires politicians and voters from a third party over a period of time to flock to that party until they overtake a major party in influence and offices held. Hence the comments I have made about how the importance of the presidential election cycle is overblown.

Is that a perfect system? Hell no. But it does demonstrate the problem with your own arguments-- that even in the system we have, your arguments are still false, illogical, and irresponsible.

Yes, and remind me who the Whigs are nominating this year?

Third parties can overtake one of the other two parties in FPTP, but then they kill off and absorb one of those parties into their fold out of sheer necessity. There are no (stable) three party systems with FPTP, and I had hoped that the stability was implied. They can only survive and grow by devouring one of the other parties. If you have two left leaning parties and one right leaning party, then the right leaning party sweeps the elections while the other two fight it out. One of the left leaning parties will outlast the other and absorb its membership and then the race between the two major parties will be competitive again. Same thing will happen if there are two right leaning parties, or four, or ten. A centrist third party makes things more difficult for the two flanks, but unless it approaches a third of the vote it's still just as purposeful as people staying home out of apathy, and if it passes a third of the vote, then one of the other two parties can combine with it and edge the other out. It's simple math.
If we have a Green revolution and Jill Stein became president in 2016, for instance, it would be by shaving votes off the Democrats, and some Republicans, and then suddenly she has a constituency to please and look, her politics get muddled and she's appealing to the middle, and WE'RE BACK WHERE WE STARTED. But that won’t happen because her politics are left of the democratic party, so she has no hope of courting the middle, and can only spoil the election by shaving off votes from the left.

FPTP is inherently corrupting and has to go. Until it does, you can't have a viable third party in this country. I want a different system that actually benefits the idealistic idiots like you. That actually makes it worthwhile for centrist candidates to court your vote instead of counting on it by default.

[Formless]

So do I. But the thing is that that will not happen if you encourage people to disregard their own political opinions-- when you do that, they stay at home, content in their learned helplessness. Because believe it or not, most people are like neither of us-- I may be comfortable knowing that I will lose multiple federal level elections (lower level election on the other hand are why my county has tax money, and Colorado Springs, where my sister goes to college, can't pay to keep the street lights on), and you are comfortable in getting candidates that are not so much less than ideal as they are not satan's right hand. Political participation is needed for political change. Unless, of course, you advocate a revolution? I doubt you do.

[eion]

1) The post right after the post I was responding to, you made the direct statement that "Formless, by voting for Jill Stein, or any other more progressive candidate, rather than Obama you are essentially giving Romney one more vote." Therefore, don't complain about the Electoral college now, that's moving the goalposts, you dishonest prick.

I was assuming (since your location is unclear) that you live in a state where your vote, or even your vote and a thousand of your friends, would actually make a difference in the electoral results in your state. If you don’t live in Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, or Florida then you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want on Election Day without affecting the results. If you live in a competitive state, like I do, then you have to be a bit more pragmatic with your voting habits.

Reserving the right to respond to whatever the fuck I please to in the future, I'll let Channel7s respond if he wishes to those points.

5) There can be a problem with the Electoral College and a problem with your way of thinking and voting habits. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Especially if you think your vote matters despite the Electoral College. If you don't, why the hell are we having this argument?

My vote does matter based on where I live because of the Electoral College. Virginia, thanks largely to changes in demographics, is now a swing state. My vote was rather immaterial in 2004 and Bush won by 26,000+ votes. The race was much, much closer in 2008, but Obama spent a lot of time campaigning in Northern Virginia and was lucky that McCain picked such a colossally stupid running mate. And in 2012 it's shaping up to be another close one here. So yeah, my vote is more important than someone who lives in a non-competitive state, and I have to be pragmatic, if not downright cynical with my voting habits, as you put them.

Get rid of the Electoral College and you level the playing field nationally when it comes to the importance of individual votes. Institute an instant runoff or transferable voting system and you've leveled the playing field amongst parties.

[eion]

I don't want people to disregard their politcal opinions, I just want them to be adults and realize they can't have what they want just by wanting it enough. That by voting for someone who most shares their opinions they may actually be voting against their interests, at least with our current broken system.

I just can't imagine any more terrifying scenario than Romney winning this year. Anyone who thinks this election isn't important just needs to look at who this man is stacking his campaign with: it's all the old classics from Bush's administration. Anyone not willing to cast aside their own politlcal opinions (as I am. Obama is, as I said, far too conservative on multiple fronts for me) and vote to prevent calaminity deserves what this man, or more accuractly the people pulling his strings, will do to what is left of our country.

[Formless]

So... you do think that individual votes matter? (as long as I live in... oh, right, Colorado. Hello!)

Let me ask you this. Third Party votes are often dismissed as "protest votes". But if your sales pitch for Obama is essentially "Romney is a bad man", isn't your vote for Obama essentially a protest vote against Romney? Ignore for a moment the fact that Obama's statistics put him at much higher odds of winning the election than a third party candidate like Stein or Johnson. If that's your sales pitch... why should I vote for him? According to some, my vote for Stein is a protest vote against both Romney and Obama. So why should I go for a candidate I don't want to vote for? Its the same logic, isn't it? What makes the "lesser of the two evils" a good standard for who is the best candidate? If it were a choice between Hitler and Mephisto, would you really vote for Hitler? Again, I don't think you understand pragmatism, because part of being a pragmatist is using and understanding logic. You might think I am an idealist, but that's just ignorance speaking.

I don't want people to disregard their politcal opinions, I just want them to be adults and realize they can't have what they want just by wanting it enough.

Yeah, voting for something gets you what you want. Or rather, having a voting strategy that is consistent across multiple election cycles and offices is how you get what you want, assuming your strategy is based on rational goals rather than something totally flipping random or arbitrary like "who is most likely to be elected this year?" and then only making a real choice if there is a tie for first place.

In other words, I want you to be an adult and ask yourself what you would do if your preferred candidate lost. Would you just give up and move to a different country? Or would you press on next election like I do? Or are you actually willing to go whole hog and propose revolution? Some other idea I haven't thought of? This is a serious question, because literally all Obama is to you is someone who isn't Romney.

That by voting for someone who most shares their opinions they may actually be voting against their interests, at least with our current broken system.

Constantly restating something doesn't make it true. How am I voting against my interests IF I AM NOT VOTING FOR A GODDAMN REPUBLICAN????? Again with the wall of ignorance tactics. I keep having to explain why I don't buy it. You keep responding with the same old tired shit. You know why I said republican voters are responsible for Gorge Bush Jr.? Because he didn't win just one election. But guess what? Nader wasn't even a contender in 2004.

I just can't imagine any more terrifying scenario than Romney winning this year.

OH NOES! NO ONE EVER HAD TO SUFFER A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT BEFORE! ROMNEY IS ANOTHER GORGE BUSH... uh, forget i said the name of the forbidden one he is dead to me

Seriously. How immature does someone have to be that they can't imagine what they will do if worst comes to worst?

[Channel72]

Its no strawman, you moron. You just don't get it. Its based on the fact that your vote actually does something besides look cool on paper. IT DETERMINES WHO ACTUALLY HAS A CHANCE OF WINNING AN ELECTION. It, and thousands of other pieces of paper actually get tallied up, and your choice of voting for Obama will be factored into the very same numbers that you are using to say whether or not he is "electable". MY argument is that your statements combined with your voting habits together make for a self-justifying choice on your part. In future elections, how are you going to determine that a third party candidate has no chance of winning? Because you didn't vote for them in this election; and because you didn't, they didn't get in. They didn't get in, they must not be the winning candidate, hence you will never vote for them until you change your voting habits and the voting habits of those around you, because they are the root cause of your voting habits. Which you will never do because you are convinced that this is a valid way of determining who to vote for. Its a political feedback loop, and claiming that it is a valid algorithm for determining who you will vote for is therefor illogical. Hence you are lying by omission and analysis.

Okay, so your argument is basically: avoiding third Party candidates because they have no chance of winning is illogical, because by doing so you perpetuate the fact that they have no chance of winning. Is that a fair assessment of your argument?

What your argument naively fails to address is that the status quo, where Third Party candidates can't win, is a result of the aggregate actions of many different voters, along with the parameters of an FPTP system. When you strip away all the BS, you're basically saying that it's illogical for an individual rational voter to take into account the aggregate actions of other voters, along with the parameters of the voting system, when making decisions about voting. Of course, this is totally absurd, since the aggregate actions of other voters and the parameters of the voting system are what actually determine elections. So you're basically saying we shouldn't care about what actually determines elections when we cast our vote!

Yeah, by not voting Third Party you aren't helping your desired Third Party candidate ever get elected, but it's not like the vote of an individual rational voter has any chance of electing the candidate either. Hence, it's called a wasted vote, because it's literally useless (or even potentially harmful). All of this is simply a known flaw in FPTP voting systems, which tend to favor two (or a few) major political parties dominating voter mindshare. As a voter working within the parameters of an FPTP system, the best you can do to elect people who advocate policies you like is to vote for whichever of the major candidates best reflects your views.

If you want Green Party policies eventually enacted into law, it would be more productive to participate in activities and movements which advocate these policies, so you can help slowly influence public opinion, so one of the major parties (probably the Democrats) starts pandering towards your views. But right now, we have a potential Romney administration to deal with, and we have to work with the facts on the ground.

Finally, the fact that you are willing to accept the possibility of a Romney administration instead of compromising your long-term voting strategy is very disturbing, and tells me you aren't at all horrified by the extreme consequences which were wrought on this nation (and the world) by the last 8 years of Republican rule.

[General Zod]

OH NOES! NO ONE EVER HAD TO SUFFER A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT BEFORE! ROMNEY IS ANOTHER GORGE BUSH... uh, forget i said the name of the forbidden one he is dead to me

The thing with Romney is he's a habitual liar and he's incapable of answering questions he doesn't have a canned answer prepped for. I have a hard time imagining why anyone would actually want to trust him to run a country.

Frankly the problem with third party candidates is they aren't really making an effort to get elected, they just want to get their message out. Maybe if they made an actual effort to get elected people would be more inclined to vote for them.

[eion]

If Romney won, I would try my best to examine all the causes of his victory. Was it idiots wasting their votes on a left-wing spoiler? Was it ignorance on the part of centrists? Did voter turnout tank thanks to policies put in place to suppress voting by Republican governors? Basically, did we lose the election because of the facts, the argument, or the system? If it's the first, well we move and work for better facts next time. Wrong argument, rephrase and retry next time. A Broken system, well this is where it gets tricky. A corrupt system that allows for Republican victories will only get more corrupt with each Republican victory, and there's when emigration starts looking like a more viable option.

It's like a house. If you get underwater on the mortgage and there is no way for you to lower your payments or increase the value of your house then often the best option is to walk away and start over.

I agree with Channel72, if you truly think Green policies are the best for the country, then you should work to change the Overton window and make those policies seem more acceptable to the country. Voting for no chance candidates is a nice statement, but it will only end in their election if other people agree with you, and they don't. not right now. I like about 70% of what Obama has done, and in most cases where I disagree it's because he hasn't gone left enough for my tastes. Saying "Well voting for Obama is as much a protest votes as voting for Stein because they both aren't Romney" ignores the fact that you can support someone passionately even if you disagree with them on a great many things. As Mayor Koch said it best, “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, you should vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, you should see a psychiatrist.” Do you agree with Ms. Stein on 12 out of 12 issues?

And we can go ahead and close this if you like since you invoked Godwin's and one doozy of a slippery slope. Obama is not Hitler and Romney is not the Devil. I think Romney winning is not terrifying because his policies are demonic or evil. I think he's terrifying because his victory is possible and the consequences of that are horrendous, but hardly hellish.

[Guardsman Bass]

Fuck it, I'm going to change what I said earlier. I'm supporting Obama because I think he's the best candidate for the office that we have running. He's an incumbent, meaning he has an enhanced chance of winning. He's not been completely retarded on foreign policy, and he's been holding back from starting another war with Iran. He pushed for and signed the first universal health care law in the United States, period. He's done what he can with Presidential powers to move forward on immigration despite Congress's complete inability to do anything on the issue (including a much more humane way of going after the companies hiring illegal immigrants as opposed to the Bush-era common use of "workplace raids" and other such stuff). He actually has experience in the White House, due to being President for four years - and I'll take a known good quantity over twenty unknowns who can only say that they might do a decent job in office.

[mr friendly guy]

Slightly off topic, but is your country had a preferential voting system, you could satisfy both Formless and Eion's motivation. You can vote for the third party alternative, and if that doesn't pan out, your vote still goes to the so called "lesser evil".

[Formless]

Okay, so your argument is basically: avoiding third Party candidates because they have no chance of winning is illogical, because by doing so you perpetuate the fact that they have no chance of winning. Is that a fair assessment of your argument?

That's the simplest way of putting it. A more accurate way would be to replace the word "fact" with "process by which they can't get office". In addition, I also think it is important to have a voting strategy that extends beyond any one election and office, so that you can hopefully start the kind of turnover that happened to the Whigs. Sure, at that point it stops being a third party, but at least there would be turnover. We don't really have that much as things are. Plus, you might get a party that has a philosophy or set of goals more concrete than some vague association with right wing or left wing politics (whatever those things are), which can change over time. Speaking of which, even if all you do is start making the other major parties move towards the kind of politics you are after, that can help too.

Yeah, by not voting Third Party you aren't helping your desired Third Party candidate ever get elected, but it's not like the vote of an individual rational voter has any chance of electing the candidate either. Hence, it's called a wasted vote, because it's literally useless (or even potentially harmful). All of this is simply a known flaw in FPTP voting systems, which tend to favor two (or a few) major political parties dominating voter mindshare. As a voter working within the parameters of an FPTP system, the best you can do to elect people who advocate policies you like is to vote for whichever of the major candidates best reflects your views.

And this is why I said that I would not respond to you anymore.

1. No "Broken Record" Tactics. Do not employ the "broken record" debating style of continuously repeating yourself until other people give up.
2. Back Up Your Claims. If you make a contentious statement of fact and someone asks for evidence, you must either provide it or withdraw the claim. Do not call it "self evident", restate it in different words, force the other person to prove your claim is not true, or use other weasel techniques to avoid backing up your claims.

I was hoping that you would just stop posting so that at least you wouldn't be guilty of flat out ignoring the multiple arguments I have brought up against the claim that Third party voters are responsible for whomever wins (which is wrong by definition) and not also blaming all voters whose candidate didn't win (which is obviously retarded). The rest of your post is just putting words into my mouth, like that my voting habits are a strategy for the individual voter, and not something I try to get other people to emulate (you know, like eion's statement that he volunteers for the Obama campaign and tries to get as many people as he can to vote with him? Like that) so as to break the vicious cycle instead of embracing it. Why do you think I am here, arguing with you? Or rather, why I tried arguing with you.