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Journal fiannaFailMan's Journal: A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush 35

Journal by fiannaFailMan
We don't have the luxury of Single Transferable Voting in the US, so there is no room for third parties. And even if we did, it would be irrelevant to the Presidential election because there is only one position up for grabs. So let's not kid ourselves, there may have been some similarities between the Democrats and Republicans in years gone by but we simply cannot allow the country to fall under another four years of fascist rule by this brain-dead puppet. There is no room for a third party in this election, especially when the top priority has to be making sure that all liberals, progressives, and reasonably sane people cast their votes to the candidate most likely to beat Bush. Don't throw away your vote to Nader. After all the thievery in Florida last time and the indications that this election will be every bit as close, only a handful of liberals voting for Nader could be enough to give us another four years of Bush. PLEASE don't do it!!!
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A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush More

A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush

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  • I voted for Nader last time around, but not this time. It is imperative, it is of absolute importance that Bush be removed this time around. Kerry may not be the absolute best choice for the job, and Nader may have my respect and admiration, but this country is in huge trouble if Bush is given another four years. My vote is going to the candidate most likely to get Bush out of office, and that is Kerry.
    • I am no fan of Bush, but I do think you'll be in for a disappointment if you expect Kerry to drastically change anything. Bush and Kerry are, for all practical purposes, the same. They come from very similar backgrounds. Now that the war in Iraq has been started, Kerry will have to clean up, and he'll probably do the same thing that Bush would have. The federal budget deficits will be about the same, and the interests of the wealthy and the politically connected will get the most attention from government.
    • The electoral votes from my state (the "commonwealth", yeah right, of Massachusetts) are going to Kerry regardless of what I do.

      Kerry doesn't need my help. Bush doesn't deserve it. At least by voting for Nader, I help to make a third party viable for a future election.

  • But in the 1992 election... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If we had had this in place in time for the 1992 election, Clinton may not have been elected that year. Ross Perot was credited with (blamed for) splitting the Republican vote.
  • Well said. I agree, this election the worst thing that could happen is to lose because a few enemies of bush wasted their votes. I like Nader, and I respect what he's done... but this time there is just too much at stake

  • Kerry == Bush (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pyro_peter_911 ( 447333 ) on Friday July 16, 2004 @08:22PM (#9723063) Homepage Journal
    I'll be voting Libertarian again this election since there is no discernible differences between Bush and Kerry.

    Here's the Big Secret of modern American politics. The Democrats and Republicans are on The Same Team. Look at the most hideous legislation to come out of Congress in the past decades. Did it squeak by along party lines? No. Most of it had overwhelming support of both Democrats and Republicans.

    This is due to a few obvious reasons:
    - Both parties have abandoned their historical positions in favor of short term fads and poll chasing.
    - Both parties have abandoned any moral basis that might have been used to guide and predict their actions.
    - Both parties are so similar that it doesn't matter who wins. We, the little guys, lose.

    The "Lesser of Two Evils" approach to voting for President has all sorts of Nasty side effects. (It sure came to bite us in the ass by getting Bush into office. It boggles my mind that I could even consider that maybe we would have been better off with Gore.) A prime problem, IMHO, of the Lesser of Two Evils voting strategy is that the candidate that you vote for will interpret your vote as a mandate for ALL of his policies both present and future. I can't vote for Kerry because he will misunderstand my vote. My vote will go to the candidate who will get us out of Iraq, lower government spending, cut taxes, etc. If I voted for Kerry he'd assume that I was supporting all of his little pet policies (which, at the moment are pretty damned vague. A good strategy considering that GWB has played out enough rope to hang himself.)

    The past four years have been very very ugly.

    The next four years are going to be very very ugly. It doesn't matter who wins.

    Sad, but true.

    Peter
    • You just don't get it, do you? If you vote for Nader you might as well vote for Bush. We don't have Single Transferrable Voting in the US, so your vote to Nader is not going to make one scrap of difference. It is not going to do anything to unseat Bush.
      • He said he's voting for Michael Badnarik [badnarik.org] not for Ralph Nader [votenader.org]. Some people vote on principle, not on whether it will make a difference, but if you want to get down to it, your vote for Kerry isn't going to make any difference either. Elections aren't decided by single votes, and the Presidential election isn't decided by the people anyway.

        I'll be voting for Badnarik too.

      • First of all, drop your spiel about Single Transferrable Voting. Even if we did have STV, you'd still be advocating putting Kerry as a top-preference over Nader if your goal is to get Bush out of office. So, STV really has nothing to do with what the issue is.

        The issue is: you want Bush out of office. The optimal way to do that is to vote for Kerry. It is suboptimal to vote for Nader. In fact, the way the system is set up, it is likely to be detrimental to vote for Nader if you want Bush out of offic

        • But, you misunderstand how 3rd parties affect elections. Historically, third-parites play an important role in elections, not because they win, but because they spoil. This has always been looked down upon by the party that had their voting pool detracted from. But, in the long-term this turns out to be a good thing. Since the party that got spoiled ends up adopting polices from the 3rd party to better appeal to the voters that are tempted to vote for a 3rd party. This is the process of how progress is

          • This may be how it was in the past, but now all they try to do is discredit third party candidates or keep them out of the elections. Look at what was done to Perot by Republicans in 96. Was his position on NAFTA picked up by any Republicans? No. Look at how the democrats are treating Nader, they aren't adopting his positions, they are trying to discourage his voters by saying he doesn't matter

            Third Parties are poor at affecting short term issues. Democrats would have to lose a couple times before the

        • First of all, drop your spiel about Single Transferrable Voting. Even if we did have STV, you'd still be advocating putting Kerry as a top-preference over Nader if your goal is to get Bush out of office. So, STV really has nothing to do with what the issue is.

          Now Condorcet, on the other hand...
      • If Kerry wins you're going to get more-or-less the same politics as Bush, so your vote for Kerry isn't going to do anything to unseat our corporate war-hungry overlords.

        A vote for Kerry is a vote for Bush.
    • It's an admirably idealistic point of view, but the point is that by voting for your favorite 3rd-party candidate on principle means, at present, that you will have no say in the final outcome of the election. I can see an argument for promoting 3rd parties most of the time, but the Bush administration is so antithetical to everything I think this country is about that it's much more important to me that Bush is not reelected.

      So Kerry has a lot of policies you disagree with. Fine, me too. BUT, I guarante
      • That depends to some extent on where you live. If you're in a state that has no chance of casting its electoral votes for anyone but Bush, then you can safely throw your vote to a third party candidate of your choice, since a vote for Kerry wouldn't do anything to help him, while a vote for a third party candidate may give him credibility (and maybe federal funds) for future elections.

        It's only in states where there's a chance of Kerry winning (even a slim chance) that a vote for a third party candidate i
        • That's true... I simplified my argument a bit. But, in Maine and Nebraska, apparantly, two Electors are given to the party that wins that state, and the rest are distributed according the the popular vote. So, of course, for those states it would be important for everyone who wanted to prevent Bush's reelection to be focused on Kerry.

          -If
    • There is one very significant difference between Kerry and Bush which any swing state voter (especially a Libertarian) should consider: Divided Government [cato.org]. When the President and Congress are of opposing parties, neither side will allow the other to achieve their full potential for evil.
  • here may have been some similarities between the Democrats and Republicans in years gone by

    Bush: Interventionist Kerry: Interventonist

    The only difference is Kerry will send our troops to die for the UN while Bush will send them to die for the US. There is no one who wants to look at our foreign policy and put America and Americans first.

    Bush: For Globalization Kerry: For Globalization

    Sure Kerry talks a good game, about how he will protect certain workers in key states, blah blah blah. He's for
  • It's true that our election system (plurality) is about the worst there is, but STV (IRV) has serious problems [electionmethods.org] as well. It fails several technical fairness criteria and has numerous practical problems:
    • All ballots must be counted together; votes for individual precincts can't be counted separately and then summed;
    • Methods that use rankings are more difficult for voters, especially if some of the candidates are unfamiliar;
    • Because third-party candidates still have little chance of winning, voters will need

    • All ballots must be counted together; votes for individual precincts can't be counted separately and then summed;

      Why is this a problem? Instead of 6 small precints with 1 candidate getting elected in each, you have one bigger precinct with 6 candidates getting elected. That's how the system works.

      Methods that use rankings are more difficult for voters, especially if some of the candidates are unfamiliar;

      How is this any different from any other system? And at the risk of sounding blunt, any voter who

      • Instead of 6 small precints with 1 candidate getting elected in each, you have one bigger precinct with 6 candidates getting elected.

        No, you misunderstand the term. Summability [google.com] is really Really REALLY useful. If you used IRV for state elections, you would need to collect all the millions of ballots on a single computer before you could even START determining the winner. This would require a completely new infrastructure.

        With most other systems (Plurality, Approval, Condorcet, etc) each local precinct

    • I am really at a loss as to how such a system can be viably accepted by folks who were elected as a majority under the current voting system. Almost all the current elected representatives will oppose it because it will lower their chances to win next time substantially.
      • That's always a problem with electoral reform. The only possibility I can see would be if voters could get a measure on the ballot to bring it about, but the incumbants and their sympathisers could then spread a load of disinformation about it and scare the electorate off the idea.
        • This is also one of those things where both the ruling major party and the opposition major party would mostly agree upon...

          After the last U.S. election one would think the climate was most favourable for a reform like that, but it didn't happen anyway. Any sane call was quickly dragged to the question whether Bush had it stolen or not, and then drowned in the (predictably) resulting howls.

          So my point is: while we can continue those academic talks whether this reform is better than that, the current sys

  • Incorrect: In fact, a vote for Nader is a vote for Nader.

    Why is it so difficult for people to understand this -- Nader's policies and Kerry's policies have virtually no overlap. They are completely seperate, different beasts altogether. Now, Kerry's and Bush's policies, on the other hand, have a lot of overlap. Hence, a lot of people want to go to third parties (be it Nader, Green Party, Libertarian, etc) because they realize they are not getting the changes they want with the Big Two.

    As for Nader cos
  • I didn't vote for him last time, but I will this time.

    In my judgment, he is the best candidate for protecting the United States and our interests from terrorists.

    I don't think Kerry has the principals or fortitude.

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