Voting for the "lesser evil" is only a good idea when the "greater evil" is so great that they will destroy the country. That has never been the case.
Voting for the "lesser evil" is actually worse than not voting at all because it tells the parties that being evil still gets them votes.
The only way political parties in the US change is through threat of losing enough votes. If you want change that the duopoly does not offer then you must vote your conscience even if it means that this "greater evil" person will win. Because in the long run the party that lost will have to incorporate the policies of the 3rd parties that are "stealing" their votes the next time around.
>The only way political parties in the US change is through threat of losing enough votes. If you want change that the duopoly does not offer then you must vote your conscience even if it means that this "greater evil" person will win. Because in the long run the party that lost will have to incorporate the policies of the 3rd parties that are "stealing" their votes the next time around.
A person gets a chance to vote in ~14-15 elections, realistically fewer than that. A person also has to coordinate their non-standard voting plan with others. I just don't think there are enough iterations for that to happen. Communication via the internet might change that, but I am skeptical.
Coordination between voters is unnecessary. The job of the 3rd parties is to communicate their issues - that plus vote tallies is enough to make it pretty clear what issues the duopoly need to incorporate into their platforms.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. I am also skeptical about the claim that Obama is a better president than McCain or Romney would have been. We still have soldiers doing police work. We still have suspensions of civil rights. We still have powerful corporations running the show. We still have the military industrial complex. We also have some new twists, like the crack-downs on whistleblowers, the assassination of US citizens, etc.
Voting for a third party candidate who does not have a chance of winning also increases their voter base, which in turn increases their funding for subsequent years.
We might not be able to elect a libertarian, green, constitution, or whig president in 2016, but just as the erosion of our freedoms has taken decades, we'll have to rebuild everything just as slowly. Vote for your preferred candidate this primary. You may not be on "the winning team" today, but you're sending a message that the status quo is not what we want.
To see how incorrect that statement is, look at every other democracy in the world. Only two two-party democracies. Every other democratic country but like Jamaica is 3 parties or greater.
I don't vote for who I want, I look at who has a chance of winning and vote for the lesser evil, because any other vote is practically meaningless.
(Our voting system is stupid)