The U.S. is different. You do not have preferential voting. A vote for someone who doesn't even have a chance is basically a wasted vote and you might as well not have voted at all. So, think carefully. If there are only two clear front runners nearing vote time, choose between those two, don't waste your vote on an also-ran. (Somebody correct me if this paragraph is wrong.)
Yes and no.
In the short-term, a vote for (e.g.) Nader has no effect on the outcome of an election. But there are two good longer-term reasons why one might want to do so.
(1) In a two-party system, the inevitable tendency is for the two parties to drift closer together, competing for the middle ground and taking the rest of their side of the spectrum for granted. The end result is that you end up with two indistinguishable parties, with the outcome determined by factors other than policies.
For those who don't sit in the increasingly narrow ground between Democrats and Republicans, the threat of voting for a third party is a powerful one. Without somebody to the left of them, the Democrats can only drift right. (Using Nader as an example here - one could equally well swap sides and look at Buchanan's role in the last election.) And a threat's only effective if you're willing to carry it out.
(2) If you want to *make* an alternative to the two existing parties, you have to build them up. The more people vote Green this election, the less they look like a 'wasted vote' next time around.
Voting third-party in a US-style election is basically a decision to sacrifice short-term influence in the hope of effecting longer-term change. Whether one makes that choice depends a lot on how much difference one sees between the two majors (Bush has done a fair bit to widen that gap in the last four years).
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zvi
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-04 23:16 (UTC)Yes and no.
In the short-term, a vote for (e.g.) Nader has no effect on the outcome of an election. But there are two good longer-term reasons why one might want to do so.
(1) In a two-party system, the inevitable tendency is for the two parties to drift closer together, competing for the middle ground and taking the rest of their side of the spectrum for granted. The end result is that you end up with two indistinguishable parties, with the outcome determined by factors other than policies.
For those who don't sit in the increasingly narrow ground between Democrats and Republicans, the threat of voting for a third party is a powerful one. Without somebody to the left of them, the Democrats can only drift right. (Using Nader as an example here - one could equally well swap sides and look at Buchanan's role in the last election.) And a threat's only effective if you're willing to carry it out.
(2) If you want to *make* an alternative to the two existing parties, you have to build them up. The more people vote Green this election, the less they look like a 'wasted vote' next time around.
Voting third-party in a US-style election is basically a decision to sacrifice short-term influence in the hope of effecting longer-term change. Whether one makes that choice depends a lot on how much difference one sees between the two majors (Bush has done a fair bit to widen that gap in the last four years).