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No. In America, you can do a "write in" vote whereby you can vote for anyone you want. So the problem is with the voters. If you voted for Obama, then you're pa
by Sorgam 12y ago
No. In America, you can do a "write in" vote whereby you can vote for anyone you want. So the problem is with the voters. If you voted for Obama, then you're partly responsible for this. The problem is people who will only vote for parties that are expensively advertised.
- jonpaul 12y agoI agree with this. My strategy as of lately has been to just write "Libertarian" in the write-in box. I realize that it will have little impact as of now. But if enough people do it, news media will start reporting this. Potential liberty minded candidates may then see an opportunity. The liberty movement is growing as demonstrated by the success of Ron Paul's campaign in 2008 vs 2012. It just takes time.
- baddox 12y agoAs far as I know, most jurisdictions require write-in candidates to officially register as such, and will count yours as an invalid ballot. Literally no one will see your "message" except for the one person counting write-in ballots.
- tlrobinson 12y ago"Potential liberty minded candidates may then see an opportunity." Legally change their name to "Libertarian"?
- AndrewKemendo 12y agoWhile it is true that you can "write in" anyone you want, the reality of all voting means that the winner is (Generally) going to be the person who is most well known - and like it or not that means campaigning aka advertising. So in practice, this doesn't get you anywhere. What we need is a nationwide NOTA (None of the above) vote option, wherein if the NOTA vote gets a plurality, the race must re-occur with different candidates. Like in Brewsers Millions.
- acjohnson55 12y agoI think instant-runoff voting is a better idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
- eru 12y agoOr approval voting. It's much easier to understand, and not really gameable.
- pateras 12y agoThe thing I don't get about approval voting is when do you stop voting for your second choice? It seems like every vote with approval voting is a strategic vote, whereas with IRV you just always vote for your preferred candidates in order. Yes, favorite betrayal is possible, but it requires a very specific set of circumstances, and the only gaming of the system is people throwing their top vote to the opponent, which is very risky and requires a freakish amount of insight into the race to know if the conditions of a spoiler are even possible. To me, strategic voting seems much more likely with approval voting than it does with IRV, and it's that strategic voting that is maintaining the two party system. I think the possibility of a possible spoiler effect under IRV is small, and that its chances of actually allowing 3rd party victories are much higher, and thus worth the risk, especially because, to me, approval voting doesn't really remove the spoiler effect, but just delays it. I like approval voting, but IRV seems like a better solution, overall. Also, I disagree that approval voting is much easier to understand. IRV isn't significantly more complicated than approval voting, and neither are significantly more complicated the current plurality/FPTP system. TL;DR - In my opinion, IRV's rewards outweigh its risks and IRV > approval voting > FPTP.
- eru 12y agoIt's strategic voting under first past the post that maintaining the two-party system, not strategic voting in general. In approval voting you are always best off voting your preference. The only thing you have to decide is your cutoff for how many people you want to approve. From what I've read, people are pretty good at that intuitively.