(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Voting for minor candidates [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-27 Based on some recent conversations, it sounds like some people around here are considering voting for minor Presidential candidates instead of Democrats. I’m not going to dismiss this option out of hand, and I’m definitely not going to berate anyone for voting that way, but I am asking everyone to think about what they want to achieve by voting — my own thought process is below. First, voting is not self-expression. It is not simply a matter of looking at a list of options and choosing who you agree with most or even who would be best at the job. Instead, it is a political act — coordinating with others in your community to achieve a goal. That’s not to say that there’s no place for a protest vote, but that’s really only appropriate for specific situations. The US political system creates strong incentives for people to organize into two parties. A big factor is our plurality election system, but there are other institutional factors also. In our all-or-nothing system, if you can’t convince roughly 50% of the voters to select the same candidate, you get nothing. In this case, many voters are basically faced with a choice between the ‘lesser of two evils’ during the general election. People who are dissatisfied with the major-party candidates have a few option: 1. Resign yourself to being a passive ‘lesser of two evils’ voter. 2. Work within a party to get better candidates 3. Build an alternative party. 4. Abandon electoral politics. The first and last options don’t need much discussion. Daily Kos would have us choose the second option and work within the Democratic party to get better candidates (I do not speak for DK, but it seems clear). Many groups have successfully worked within one of the major parties to have their concerns addressed — they vote in primaries and the actively support general election candidates who address their concerns. However, many voters don’t see this as a viable strategy: they feel like they are ignored by the ‘insider’ networks that dominate the parties; their campaign contributions get drowned out by big-money in the primaries; and when they do finally get acknowledged within their own party, their concerns are still downplayed on the grounds that they may drive away ‘swing-voters’ in the general election. Others have tried to get their preferred candidates via a third party or independent run. There are a few different ways that this could work. 1. Replace an existing party through sheer force of will. The new party would basically need to get more than 1/3 of the vote across much of the country in order to push one of the old parties into third place, at which point the “lesser of two evils” dynamic favors the new party. This hasn’t happened since the Civil War. Once you overcome these barriers, then you need some way for the new party to not develop the same problems that plagued the old parties. 2. Pressure one or both major parties to nominate better candidates or change their policy positions by demonstrating that your faction is willing to defect or even switch parties over the issues being raised. But voting for minor candidates can’t achieve this goal — on the one hand, you’d need run candidates with similar platforms in many elections to demonstrate your support (i.e. build a party), but you’d also have to be ready to join whichever party accepts your demands, so it’s hard to justify the effort of building a third party. This seems like a strategy that is better suited for an independent issue advocacy group that will issue endorsements of a leading candidate, rather than a party running its own candidates. 3. Use the campaign solely as a propaganda tool. This may make sense for anarchists or authoritarians, but not for anyone who believes that governments should be elected. A protest vote could make sense if you truly have no preference between the two major candidates, but you need to be pretty far off to not recognize that the party embracing dictatorship is clearly the greater evil. 4. Finally, there’s the option of voting and campaigning for an individual who is so influential and appealing that they don’t need a party to support them. I don’t really see that happening at the national level (I don’t fully understand Sanders, but he’s essentially a Democrat) All of these strategies work best if your faction draws nearly equally from both major parties, and the campaign reaches voters who would support both parties. This way, you don’t have to worry about ruining the changes of your preferred major candidate, and your faction may have more negotiating clout since it is more likely to tip the election by voting for the other major party than by simply sitting out of the election. I think that the only time when it makes since to split off a wing of a single party is when elections are completely noncompetitive — then it could make since to split from the smaller of the two main parties in the hope of building a new coalition that can compete with the major party, or it could make sense for a wing of the dominant party to break off if they think they can become the main opposition party. So overall, I don’t think that the current crop of minor candidates can provide us with a constructive path forward under the current circumstances. Stick with the Democrats, and let’s focus on stopping the Republican coup-faction from gaining any more power. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/27/2201273/-Voting-for-minor-candidates?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/