When would you consider voting for a third party?

In Pennsylvania in the last presidential election, Clinton lost by fewer than 50,000 votes. There were 200,000 votes for 3rd party candidates. Clearly, voting third party changed the election. You are wrong to say voting 3rd party doesn’t change anything. I can give you the same information from both Wisconsin and Michigan.

I would vote third party, first, if they meet my ideals.
But only if they had a chance of governing.
Where I live we have multiple parties to choose from, and sometimes we get coalitions consisting of three, four, or (I believe) five parties.
In America I probably wouldn’t vote for the green party if they didn’t have at least a chance to win (with that I mean, govern).

If it was a candidate that I could stand behind, and if by voting 3rd party I could end trumps reign of hate, I would certainly vote for them.

@Hawaii_Jake I’m not wrong, since that’s not what I said. I’ll research PA a bit more for 2016, which I assume is the election you’re referring to, thanks.

@rebbel Indeed, its the constant refrain I hear from all over the US (and on fluther), most feel any 3rd party is a wasted vote. I’d really like to change that to be a mainstream choice without being abused for voicing it.

@KNOWITALL You wrote: Most people think third party voting is a waste of a vote, as there’s not enough people voting third party to actually count or change anything. I have supplied facts which show that voting 3rd party did indeed change something in that elections of 2016. You are wrong.

@Hawaii_Jake ‘Most people think’ is different than ‘I think’. Sigh.

Yes, and I have.

But the stupid-as-hell binary voting system tends to mean the two big corrupt parties can run whatever tools they like even if they’re widely disliked and have negative approval ratings (e.g. Trump and Clinton), and no one else will have a real chance.

That’s why we need a revised system that lets you vote for the candidate you actually want while also expressing your order of preference for the people you don’t want.

When the candidate is right for the position.

@Zaku Correct, I’m just wondering how to instill hope in people who are completely disgusted with both parties.

Interesting aside: The last third party candidate to win one or more states was George Wallace of the American Independent Party in 1968, while the most recent third party candidate to win more than 5.0% of the vote was Ross Perot, who ran as an independent and as the standard-bearer of the Reform Party in 1992 and 1996, respectively.-wiki

I would vote for third party candidates for the local Assembly and State Senate, and for Congress.

I have considered and have done it.
In the upcoming election, that won’t be happening.

@zenvelo Wow, the State Reps surprised me! Quite a few there, although only FIVE in Congress. Odd.

https://ballotpedia.org/Current_independent_and_third-party_federal_and_state_officeholders

As long as our system is the way that it is, I will never vote 3rd party.

Voting for a third party is like pissing in the wind. It may make you feel good temporarily, but you end up getting peed on.

It’s a wasted vote.

During my voting life I have mostly voted 3rd party. However, I will not be doing that in 2020. I will vote for whomever the Dem nominee is. I doubt I’ll like it, but I’ll do it anyway.

That’s good to hear @tinyfaery. I would have preferred a different candidate, but I thought, and still think, that Hillary would be an acceptable president. My vote for her was a vote against trump.

@HawaiiJake you assume those third party voters would have voted for Hillary instead. This is a wrong assumption, thus why third party voters were not the cause of Trump winning.

I vote for third party candidates whenever I can. If the election isn’t close, I vote for third party candidates just to run up their numbers (because I disagree with their exclusion and am willing to use my vote to increase their percentage of the vote). If the election is close, I pick whichever candidate I most prefer out of the candidates who have a shot at winning.

@Hawaii_Jake It seems that your argument is this:

1. Clinton lost Pennsylvania in 2016 by fewer than 50,000 votes.
2. Third party candidates in Pennsylvania won a combined 200,000 votes in 2016.
3. Therefore, voting third party changed the election.

If so, then it bears mentioning that the argument is fallacious in the absence of evidence that enough of those 200,000 would have voted for Clinton (as opposed to voting for Trump or simply not voting at all at the presidential level). If they had split evenly, the result would have been the same. If they had split 60/40 for Clinton, the result also would have been the same (albeit much closer). And that’s leaving aside the fact that if Clinton had won Pennsylvania, she still would have lost the Electoral College. So even if third party voters in Pennsylvania changed the result of their state’s election, they did not change the result of the national election.

There was no one single cause of that disaster.

I’d also like to address the “wasted vote” argument in two ways. First, if you really believe that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote, then you should consider supporting ranked voting. I tend to support the Schulze method, but even the more popular instant-runoff voting is still far superior to our current (first-past-the-post) method.

Second, we should consider the possibility that the value of a vote is constituted by more than just whether or not it picks the winner. Voting for someone who cannot win (or leaving a ballot line blank) can have effects that go beyond a single election. The example that I like to use is the congressional district in which I grew up.

Our representative was considered unbeatable. But then someone noticed something: every two years, more and more people were voting for either a third party candidate or simply not voting at all on that line of the ballot. That person ran for Congress and won 49% of the vote against the “unbeatable” candidate. He then ran two years later and won—all because a bunch of people were willing to “waste” their votes in previous elections.

Votes don’t just elect people. They are also an important poll of where people are situated politically. This is also why it’s more powerful to register a protest vote than it is to stay home. People who stay home in protest are indistinguishable from those who stay home due to apathy.

@SavoirFaire I appreciate you eloquence and you make a very good argument, but the fact is we have to act within the framework of our system, whether we like it or not. Protest votes don’t do jack. trump got elected anyway.

I’ve been voting 3rd party for years with an occasional vote mainstream!!! When I first became old enough to vote, I was told that I couldn’t bitch IF I didn’t vote. So, when the Reps & Dems didn’t give me anybody I could vote for, I voted 3rd party because I knew that I was going to bitch. I’m a registered Independent who has NO party as I vote for the best PERSON…NOT the party!! I get so fucking tired of hearing that I wasted my vote when I did vote. The Reps have figured out a way to cheat & get around how “the people” vote so now NOBODY’s vote counts unless you’re a Rep.Change is made a small step at a time & I feel I’m doing my part to facilitate change!!!

I’d personally love to see a block on the ballot that reads “NONE OF THE ABOVE” That would show how many people are dissatisfied with both parties. The Tea Party was a joke. It was made up of Reps who couldn’t make it as a Rep & chose to run against them.

stepping off my soapbox

Most here seem to assume that all of those third party votes would have gone to Hillary, not the case. I know a good number of Republicans that simply wrote in candidates. I did. Truth be told all they likely did was bring the totals down for both candidates.

@Are You I know many who wrote in names, too. Maybe a bit more widespread than we think haha!

I would vote for a third party if they stood a chance of winning. Otherwise, I’m just giving another vote to the party I like the least.

@ARE_you_kidding_me It doesn’t matter what everyone else did, whether they brought down some vote total or not. What matters is what you did.

I’ll consider third party for president when I’m not very afraid of the other candidates. Most of the time third party is the same as not voting, but at least you get the opportunity to give a candidate a chance who you might like best. Unless, the third party candidate has a serious chance of winning.

In local elections I’m much more open to third party.

Mostly, I vote Democrat though. Basically, straight ticket. Once in a blue moon I deviate for one office or another.

The mistake people make is assuming third party voters were Democrats voting in protest. I have Republican family members who voted for the Libertarian candidate. They wouldn’t vote for Trump. Third party voters are a mix of many people. If I hadn’t voted third party in 2016 I probably would have sat out instead.

I’m a registered Republican, but actually, I’m a Libertarian. If there were a Libertarian that had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning I’d vote for him/her.

@RabidWolf Same.

@JLeslie Maybe controlling our votes with that fear is what perpetuates the ‘wasted vote’ theory, benefiting the big two. Sad.

Yeah, that’s always in my thoughts, but I also go by how popular the person is. When I voted for Trump, it was to help save this Country from Hillary. I knew that it would have been very bad for her to be in office.

@KNOWITALL I’m guessing there is rarely a third party candidate that at least 30% of the voting population wants to vote for. You need at least 30% to win I think. I don’t know what percentage of the vote Ross Perot received? I knew quite a few people who voted for him.

I’ll vote 3rd party if the Democratic candidate doesn’t do enough to earn my vote. It’s as simple as that. Democrats aren’t entitled to my vote simply by having a “D” next to their name on the ballot. I voted for Jill Stein in 2016, and would do so again, knowing the outcome.

If Bernie manages to win in 2020, I think Clinton losing will actually be the best possible outcome given the fuckery of the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Some of these guys with a “D” are voting with Trump like 90% of the time anyways. No thanks. I’d rather have them lose, and have primaries that get better candidates in those seats than Democrats in name only. Christ, Biden just said he’s open to the idea of having a Republican VP. WTF?

In the end, I guess it comes down to being willing to exchange short-term losses for much bigger long-term gains. When we’re talking about the habitability of our planet, that’s worth pretty much any price.

@JLeslie Perot received 19,743,821 votes, which accounted for 18.91% of the popular vote. He failed to win any states in the Electoral College because of the relatively even distribution of his support, but did win over 30% of the vote in Maine and 27% in Utah, finishing second in both states.-wiki

I liked him a bit, too.

I was actually more left leaning until Obama. I listened and followed the debates carefully and was mightily impressed. So I voted for him. Then I watched the Republicans lose their damn minds and start acting like utter, embarrassing assholes and I ran. I put as much distance between their embarrassing antics and myself as I possibly could. I’ve been a staunch Democrat ever since.
That’s not to say that I wouldn’t vote for a Republican if an excellent one came along. But the Republican party has turned in to some sort of twisted, fucked up animal. Kids in cages? Men want to gain control over women’s bodies, like it should be? Go back where you came from? What IS this bullshit?

I was more left-leaning until I went to Berkeley. Though it’s all relative. Outside of the Bay Area political bubble, I’d be considered pretty liberal.

Looks like I have the usual choice between the Bloods and the Crips. As Jesse Ventura calls the Repubs and Dems. Some choice. Repubs are to far right, Dems are (drifting) to far left for me…