Election day was on Tuesday, so for this post I’ll talk about voting for a third-party candidate. I’d like to say going into this that I am writing this with an extremely democratic viewpoint. I know that this is an argumentative prompt, but I just want to throw out that I will not be looking at this through a moderate lens. To answer the question, I do believe that voting for a third-party candidate means throwing away your vote. I believe that especially in the case of the 2020 election, voting for a third-party candidate is completely throwing away your vote. I believe that in this past election, voting for a third-party candidate was just a masked way to vote for Donald Trump.
In 2000, republican George H. W. Bush was running against democrat Al Gore. However, Ralph Nader ran for the green party. Gore won the popular vote by a million, but Bush won the presidency. Nader got three million votes, and if you replace all of the Nader votes with Gore votes, he would have won the presidency. I am, of course, not in favor of George Bush. Because so many people voted for this third party candidate, who was never going to win (he had under one sixteenth of the votes of either of the other candidates), the democrat lost the election. This is because, in the context of the 2020 election, voting for a third party candidate was the equivalent of voting for Trump, at least in my opinion.
On that point, there are a couple reasons that could lead someone to vote for a third-party candidate. Again, in the context of the 2020 election, if you wanted to vote for Trump, but didn’t want to admit it, you could vote for a third party candidate. You’d know they’d never win and you’d be throwing your vote away, but not voting for Biden is similar to voting for Trump. I’m not sure why someone would want to do this, but it’s a possibility. Another possibility that could go for both parties is voting for a third-party candidate to protest the lack of choices given by the two major parties. I should hope someone wouldn’t do this in a larger election, like a presidential or gubernatorial election, but in something like a mayoral race, or a school board one, or a county judge, I could see how one would do this. Assuming I’m a pro-choice democrat, if the only options presented to me were a pro-life republican and a pro-life moderate democrat, I might write in Doja Cat or Harry Styles to protest the choices that don’t represent what I would like to choose.
I don’t think voting for a third-party candidate is necessarily a bad idea, or something I wouldn’t want to do. However, if I were to vote for a third party candidate in the future, I would make sure that I had considered all other options, along with possible consequences that could come from voting for this candidate. I will say, though, as a general statement, that it is bad to vote for a third-party candidate in a larger election. Every vote counts, and enough people voting for a third-party candidate could mess up entire elections, as seen in 2000. Happy late election day!
I found it interesting third-party candidates could affect election turnouts. Overall, I never knew much about the third-party candidate. Based on reading this blog, I do not think a third-party candidate should exist because it seems to make the voting system more complicated than it needs to. However, I can see why a third-party candidate could be useful for other people. It allows you to have another option if you do not approve of the first two candidates or it allows you to vote without throwing your vote away to someone you do not support. Overall, this blog was extremely informative and gave me a basic understanding of the third-party candidate.
ReplyDelete-Timothy Park
You bring up some very good points in your blog about voting for a third party candidate. I found it helpful that you used certain examples from the past (e.g., George W. Bush) to help readers better understand the risks of voting third party. I agree with most of your points. I feel that some voters in recent elections may have voted for a third party candidate simply because the voters were members of a third party. There is a decent amount of voters who would rather cast their vote for a candidate who has an improbable chance of winning, than vote for somebody who they do not entirely believe would be a better President; even if it would risk an even worse candidate winning the election. Your blog was very well written and made me consider this topic in a new way.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up very valid points! I personally agree with your point. While voting for a third-party candidate is extremely valid, it more or less is a "waste." Your example of what would happen if all the third-party votes went into one candidate was a good way of showing how much these other candidates can affect an election. Overall, very good points and arguments!
ReplyDelete- Athena
You brought up a lot of great points. I have also heard of many times where third party candidates change the result, such as when Roosevelt made his own party called the Bull moose party and split the republican vote into two, and the democrat won even though there was more republic votes. I don't know who was the better candidate, I just know this happened. I think having more candidates is an at least fundamentally good idea in terms of representing more viewpoints/ideas, but the problems you mentioned make it hard. One idea I have heard is a ranking system, in which everyone doesn't vote for one person, but gives the most points and least points. This would be the best of both worlds in my opinion, but I don't know how it would work out practically.
ReplyDeleteYour points are really good! I totally agree that voting for a third party is just throwing away your vote. Your blog is really really good and very interesting to read!
ReplyDeleteI think this point is valid. Especially under the current election system, third party candidates are unable to vote and often negatively affect other candidates. I think a solution would be runoff voting, where if the candidate loses, the person's vote goes to their 2nd choice. This was a really interesting blog post and gave me an understanding of the state of the election system.
ReplyDelete