libetarian party

Yes but how would your vote count? I think the "vote your ideology, not your strategy" contingent is over looking the fact that _how_ the votes are counted -- and this is assuming they are, in fact, all counted -- has a radical impact on who gets elected.

Assume a classic game theory scenario where you have three candidates, A, B, & C, and nine voters, among who their preference for the candidates can be broken down into groups I, II, and III.

Group I is four voters, and the prefer in this order: A, C & B
Group II is three voters, and they prefer: B, C & A
Group III is two voters, and they prefer: C, B & A
(In this example, it just so happens that nobody prefers the combination C, A & B.

If you hold the election by a simple plurality-system, where whoever gets the most votes on the first round wins, like the recent California recall, candidate A wins with 4 votes (3 for B, 2 for C).

However, if you hold a run-off between the top two voter getters, the case in most American election, candidate B wins, beating A by a margin of 5 to 4 (As the two C voters pick B as their next preferred choice.

But then again, say you vote by a weighted-preference system, which is how college football rankings are determined (in the coach's and sportswriter's polls at any rate.) You award "points" to each candidate based on preference: First preference gets 3 points, second preference gets 2 points, and third preference gets 1 point. In this case C wins, earning 20 points, to A's 17 and B's 15.

Three different ways of counting the votes, each in their own way equally "just" and defensible, and three different winners in the same election. Yeah, but which one is best?

The point is, voting itself -- even when all the votes are counted -- is an imperfect process. And the "Will of the People" is a subject better reserved for bong hits than laboratory science. It's a game. Believing otherwise is hopelessly naive -- more or less like Libertarianism.

So to KBJ -- and the many others in this thread who've couched it in equally harsh terms -- y'all are way out of line.

n00b's picking fights already. But it gets my hackles up when people saying they don't respect people for the way they vote. It's their eff--ing vote. You ought to simply respect them for voting and leave it at that.

(I voted Nader in '04, it was in Texas so it didn't "matter," but I probably would have done the same thing had I lived in Florida. At the time I bought into the line that there's essentially no difference between the two "corporate-owned" parties. I have to say the last three years have given the lie to that little bit of hopeless naivite -- hey, I didn't say I was immune either -- and I have to wonder how many Florida voters who voted their conscience feel the same way. More than 400?)

This is a result of an over-reliance on the economic theories of the Austrian school, which suffer from a rationalist bias. Without empirical input, reason quickly goes off the track, because the axioms you are reasoning from do not have a grounding in real experience.

Dude the point is awareness, not victory. why is it that everyone wants to go straight for the big win and not develop a winning record first? All I'm saying is that people have said they "waste their votes" on third party people. Well that's fine, keep thinking that way if you are so inclined. But don't expect any real change. If you want change you have to make the effort. To do that you have to stand by your convictions more than being concerned with winning that year. Even if your convictions have you voting for one of the big two you still did what was true to yourself and beliefs.

But for people to whine about either party in office and still vote to keep them in even against their own beliefs isn't going to do squat for any real effective change in the system that perpetuates the status quo. If you're a republican it couldn't be any more screwed for you than it was when Clinton was in, if you're a democrat it can't get more screwed for you than with Bush. We already know how well fucked we can be between the two parties. I'd just like a little more variety in my fuckings.

And what is one's strategy in voting for someone just based on their chances of winning? Complacency?

[Edited on Nov 17, 2003 by Troll]

Troll,

That's cool mate -- but it's also different than saying people who vote defensively are deluded, and not worthy of respect (KBJ et al's comments). You vote for a third party, you vote your conscience. That's not to say the people who vote for one of the Big Two, even though, in their hearts, they sympathize with the Greens or the Libs or the Commies, aren't voting their conscience either.

Do you believe Al Gore would have unilaterally invaded Iraq in defiance of global opinion and the largest war protests in history at home, without a plan or any idea of what he was getting into? Gore came from the administration with the most multilateral State Department in history.

There are consequences for not voting for your third party -- The guy who got your defensive vote figures you're on the reservation enough that he doesn't have to listen to your "extremism." Your vote is not particpating in building a viable alternative movement. But there are consequences for not voting for Gore, too, and they're dying in the desert every day.

Maybe building a new way is more important, we can argue that. But not getting American's killed, not killing innocent cilivians, not wasting billions of public dollars, not squandering our credibility as the leader of the world is important, too. There were defensive voters out there who argued passionately that there were, in fact, real differences between the two candidates.

They voted their conscience too. Puh-TAY-to Puh-TAH-to. So there

Well the logical counter to that is a policy of minor hand slaps, which we took for 8 years and gave a pretty good indication of our policy being mild response. If Gore had won, I seriously doubt we'd have even gone into Afghanistan where we did capture some guys making new plans. As much as I hate seeing a couple of hundred of guys that volunteered having their lives taken away in combat, I hate to see 3000 get nailed because we're seen as weak and vulnerable. Maybe we can play guess the outcome by wondering if we'd have even been in this if Clinton had lost and someone else established a different policy. Afterall, we know the plans were made long before Bush took office so it wasn't him that gave them the idea. But then Clinton had us in more countries than any other president while I was serving so maybe Gore would have sent us to even more countries than Bush has.

See the odd thing here is that you took voting for something new if you desire, to a battle between the two big parties. It's all specualtion as to who would have done what. And from what I just read of your post a third option would have been better for us. Why not vote for something different and fresh if you feel the need for change? Then we may luck out and get someone that ain't gung-ho and not a wuss

Many people don't vote because they're sick of the way shit is with the big two. They figure they're fucked either way and it's just deciding how and they ain't gonna pick because it's not something they want anyhow. Some are just lazy. That's a large number of disenfranchised americans. a number larger than either one of the big two party gets when they do win.

I can be a slave to the masters and bitch how one or the other beats me down and accept that as my fate. Or I can tire of them and fight for a better life. Not that one of the big two can't also provide that life for me, but as you said earlier they figure "you're on the reservation enough that he doesn't have to listen to your "extremism." Let them see the reservation is at risk and they'll listen.

My only point here is how change works. It takes time and committment and to me if you ain't got either then you really ain't got much to bitch about in wanting things different than they are.



[Edited on Nov 17, 2003 by Troll]

d00d, I couldn't agree more. Rationalism is for people who haven't got the patience to sit, observe, experiment and ponder (like me, but hey! at least I'm into synthesizing the experimental results of the patient clan). They're hoping to hit that shortcut to truth before they die. But there isn't any shortcut, mo-ah-ah-ah!

Rationalism is just a system to get you from A to B; it's meaningless if you haven't learned the nature of A through observation. Sometimes I think we humans even learn the rules of getting from A to B with observation, not reason. I personally doubt pure reason establishes anything, but I have to admit, that's my own rational inference, arguing from the history of science being the history of experiment triumphing over 'reasonable' notions that everyone just knew to be true (until empiricism KO'd 'em).

Oh shit I misread the subject line. Ignore my last post.

Yeah I'm happy for all those Liberians that President Charles Taylor is gone. He was pretty fucking brutal.