Should Green Party Voters Consider Voting for Kerry Instead?

[one_raven]

Please please don't do it.
Hear me out...

Yes, our two-party system is a heavy cross to bear, and I would love to do away with it.
It's a real shame that we are reduced to chosing between the lesser of two evils, but that is the reality of the situation we have.

Let's say you have 11 people voting.
5 vote for greater evil.
4 vote for lesser evil.
2 abstain (or vote for Nader, who has no chance whatsoever of winning, so in effect they didn't vote at all).
The result?
More evil wins, and the two Nader voters get to feel good about themselves and say, "Well, at least I didn't vote for Bush so you can't blame me." But, if they voted for lesser evil, at least lesser evil would be in office rather than greater evil.
So, the people get a more evil leader, and the less than 2% can feel good about not voting for more evil.
Where's positive gain for the people in that?

I can't understand how that makes sense.
Who, besides yourself, does that help?
Do you support the Green Party because they are activists and care for the environment and the most important things?
That all sounds well and good, but try and look at it objectively and somewhat pragmatically.
I agree with what the Green Party stands for, but sadly that is beside the point at this stage.
Ask yourself...
Is the point of being an activist feeling good about yourself or helping others?

Ralph Nader has absolutely NO CHANCE of winning. Say all you want, that simple fact remains.

So, what is the result of you casting a vote for him?
Simply one less vote for Kerry.
That's all.

So, pragmatically, what you achieve by your personal "activism" is giving Bush a better chance of winning.
As close as this race is turning out to be, the miniscule 1 or 2% that Nader may receive could very well be a deciding factor.
So, in an attempt to assuage your conscience by not voting for Kerry because you don't like the system, you could have to live with the fact that you helped Bush win another term.
No different AT ALL than not voting, except you get the selfish pleasure of having a smug smile when you say you voted for Nader.
Again, what is the point of activism, personal gratification or helping others?

Why do you think that Republican groups are donating money to Nader's campaign?
Not to mention, what does it say about Nader's integrity to accept the money.
He knows he has no chance of winning.
He knows he is basically taking votes away from Kerry, because no Green Party member would vote for Bush.
He knows that the Republicans realize this so they want him to do as well as he possibly can because he is taking votes from Kerry that have no chance of going to Bush.
He knows that's why they are giving him money.
Knowing all this he still doesn't drop out of the race.
Not for any higher ideals, because, just like you, he is effectively sacrificing his ideals for the sake of his own bull**** pride.
His books and speeches may make a positive difference in people's minds and lives, but his staying in the race makes a negative difference in those same lives.

Ideals are funny tricky little things.
Sometimes it's not easy to tell if we are adhering to them or betraying them.
They get in the way of objective and pragmatic thought.
I have often been a victim of this.

Do me a favor...
Take a pen and paper and write down the issues that mean the most to you when it comes to who should be president.
Examine each of these issues and consider where we would be if Bush were elected.
Examine each of these issues and consider where we would be if Kerry were elected.
Examine each of these issues and consider where we would be if you vote for Nader.

Try to think of ways your issues would be helped if you give Nader another vote, rather than Kerry.
Tell me, how, in any concievable way, your issues would get any help if Nader got 10% rather than 2%?

Which of your specific issues does Kerry stand against?
How are your issues harmed by Kerry getting into office?

If you truly believe that every vote counts, and you vote for Nader than you are doing nothing but helping Bush get into office.
If you don't honestly believe that every vote counts, why bother voting at all?
How does your vote cast for the Green Party, who doesn't have a snowflake's chance in Hell of winning, help work towards accomplishing your ideals?

Wouldn't the Green Party be helped much more by you voting for someone that is closer to your own ideals and perhaps volunteering to help them with their envrionmental efforts and lobbying so maybe they can gain more votes and actually giving them some tiny bit of hope winning the next time?

I submit, that by voting for Nader, rather than Kerry, you are actually betraying your ideals.

Here is a simple question that sometimes has a very complex answer, nevertheless, it is imperative to be honest and frank with yourself and answer it truthfully.

What will best serve, not display or reflect, but SERVE your ideals?

Vote Kerry.
Thank you for your time.

 

[Hurkyl]

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

 

[kawikdx225]

You really made some good points and convinced me not to vote for Nader.
Bush it is.

 

[one_raven]

You really made some good points and convinced me not to vote for Nader.
Bush it is.

:rofl:

 

[Pyrovus]

You guys really need preferential voting.

 

[one_raven]

You guys really need preferential voting.

What is that?
Like run-off voting?

 

[Pyrovus]

Basically, you number all the candidates in order of preference, and then they count all the first preference votes. Then the guy with the least votes gets eliminated, and everyone who voted for that person has their vote transferred to the candidate to who they gave their second preference and they continually repeat this process until there's only one candidate left.

So, if you had preferential voting, you could vote like this:
1 Nader
2 Kerry
3 Bush

without doing Bush any favours, because in the (highly probable) event that Nader doesn't get in, it would be effectively the same as a vote for Kerry.

 

[one_raven]

I have never heard of that system.
I love it!
Is that in effect anywhere already?

 

[Pyrovus]

We've used the preferential system in Australia since about 1926 or so, and I'm pretty sure New Zealand also uses it. I'm not too sure about elsewhere though.

 

[one_raven]

Thanks for the info!

 

[Moonbear]

That's sort of how our electoral college used to choose a president and vice president. The vice president used to be the second runner up, until we wound up with political parties and presidents and vice presidents of different parties, which just didn't work well at all. But I do think it's a good system. Do you think it gets people to think more about the candidates if they actually have to rank all of them rather than blindly choosing just one? Or are there still a lot who just rank them in somewhat random order because they can't be bothered to educate themselves about the candidates?

 

[one_raven]

I think a bit of both.
I think the vast majority of people vote down party lines unless there is a glaring reason not to (like so many Republicans supposedly voting Democrat this time around).
I think it would cause most Democrats to vote Democrat first then either Green or Independent.
It would, though, sway people like me to vote Green or Independent first, because all of that stuff I said up there wouldn't matter anymore.
I think it would be a helluva boon to the little guys.

Getting more names onto the ballot with an actual chance and throwing a wrench into the self-limiting two-party system couldn't hurt, right?

 

[Pyrovus]

In Australia the system is slightly hampered by the way that the parties produce "how to vote" cards, which basically tell people giving their first preference to that party how to distribute the rest of their preferences. Of course, you can just ignore the how to vote cards, but most people blindly vote the way the parties tell them to, rather than thinking things through themselves. Personally I think the system would be more democratic if how to vote cards should be banned, but it's never going to happen (the parties benefit too much from "preference deals" to ban them). Often what the major parties will do when a minor party emerges that poses a serious challenge to the two party system is to preference that party last, regardless of how that party stands ideologically. For instance, a few years back we had the emergence of the One Nation Party (which was a rather fascist mob) which was ideologically quite close to the Liberal Party (the name is very misleading), but the Liberals preferenced them last, because they were gaining quite a lot of support (somewhere about 10% I think).

 

[one_raven]

That's really sad.
I doubt there is any democratic (or quazi-democratic as it is in the US) that people won't try and take advantage of to make that much less democratic.

 

[Locrian]

You really made some good points and convinced me not to vote for Nader.
Bush it is.

This pretty much sums up the huge problem with the lesser evil argument given in the original post. Your opinion of who a lesser evil is - or even that there is a lesser evil - is entirely your opinion, and I seriously doubt you can back it up with information we independants haven't heard many, many times before.

What's more, even barring the last paragraph, the OP shouldn't be directed to all independants. It should be directed towards independants in swing states. I live in Alabama. If every independant voter in the 2000 election had instead voted for Gore 10 times, they still would not have contributed a single electoral vote to Gore.

My vote for president really doesn't matter here in AL, except as a statement of whom I think should run our country. It will have no affect upon the election. Telling me not to vote my conscience is criminal.

I've actually started to enjoy when democrats here accuse independants of wasting their vote. I launch into a tirade about how stupid AL democrats are for voting Gore in the last election; they lost by hundreds of thousands of votes. WHat a waste. They couldn't have possibly won. What a dumb bunch of vote wasting democrats.

They usually get real offended. Every now and then, one gets the point.

 

[one_raven]

Your point is well taken.
I certainly conceed that a vote for an Independent or Green in a state that Kerry is a shoe-in would actually do much more good than harm by getting the candidate more press and some note of notoriety.
Getting the notion of the Independents being here to stay into the minds of mainstream America is certainly a positive thing.