-- Comment At Your Own Risk --
I too have had this very same argument with friends. I usually start with the probability argument and go from there. Here is a post where I have tried to make the argument:
http://liberty4kids.blogspot.com...-your-
vote.html
At some point after conceding the probability argument, I will get, "Then why vote?" Here is my reply to that:
http://liberty4kids.blogspot.com...n-why-
vote.html
I found a way to get Republicans to back off from me on this issue. First, you ask them to prove that THEIR guy has actually done anything that they agree with. You have to hit them there first to make the voter be able to either justify or stammer like an idiot on why they think this candidate will actually do a good job. If they say all of the right things about the 20% of the issues that the voter agrees with them on, but never acts on THOSE issues, then the voter has clearly wasted their vote. That's forgivable the first time, but unforgivable after that because the candidate has proved themselves to not be interested in those issues very much. Therefore, any vote for them is now truly wasted. You might as well be voting against a candidate you completely disagree with because either way, you'll get a candidate who you consistently disagree with once votes have to be cast in the body politic.
Then, you bring up the fact that the Republicans have done almost everything the voter feared from the Democrats. If they start to object, get a little ugly with them, and make them justify calling you a fool when they are telling you to vote for a party that behaves like the party they fear coming to power.
If they won't at least drop it after that, they're probably either too stupid or contemptuously ideological to deal with.
Oh, Mike you have NO idea! I ended up in a long discussion with my friend and I got him to agree with me on many points, then when he realized it, he backtracked, changed his mind and didn't agree anymore.
I even got him to agree that the definition of a vote was a act of trust that you supported that candidate to represent you. Then when he saw he was dangerously close to agreeing with me that a vote for a third party is a vote for the other guy, he changed his tune. UGH! So frustrating. But I expect that from him. And he says I'm the illogical one.
We talked about voting for the lesser of two evils and he tried to tell me that if I'll only vote for someone I agree with, then I can only vote for myself since I won't agree with anyone else 100%. Fortunately, that didn't work. I told him it's ok to have minor differences with a candidate as long as those differences were not moral compromises. I don't think he liked that response since he's a "lesser of two evil" type of guy. I've tried to get him to answer the question of whether he'd vote for Hilter or Stalin if those were his only two choices and he has never answered me. But it's fun to watch him squirm.
If you really want to mess with your friend, tell him that voting itself is immoral since its only purpose is to rationalize the collectively-willed violation of another's life, liberty, or property.
Just a thought. 
By the way, Difster, how's the currency trading going? Are you making any coin? I'm not; I'm about ready to beat my head against the wall. It's frustrating as hell.
Coleman got some, Franken got some,
Barkley got the rest (about 15% total).
Every vote for Barkley was taken from either Coleman or Franken, thus contributing to the closeness of the election and forcing the recount, the election contest, the appeal, etc.
Frankly, Dif, it's people like you what cause . . . unrest.
.
Joe, I really hope you're kidding.
Have you stopped to consider that people vote for a third party because they don't want to vote for either of the other two? If the third person didn't exist to vote for they might not vote or write in another name. You can't force people to vote for one of two people.
If your goal is just to get SOMEONE elected then I suppose your philosophy is fine. Personally, I want people elected who are going to be doing their best to preserve my liberties.
But say the town is 45% democrat and 55% rebublican. Then the republicans win.
Suppose a constitutional conservative runs for office. He'll likely pull 15% from the republican base and nothing significant from the democrats. Then the democrats win.
What I see as the problem is the vast majority don't care if we are heavily taxed as long as they get a hollow promise of some benefits.
I vote for the constitutional guy because it's the right thing to do. I'm making a statement, support the right guy, and I know that 1 vote doesn't really make a difference. I'm with difster in my opposition to voting for the lesser evil if the lesser evil is just going to destroy the nation a bit slower.
The movie about 1 vote deciding the presidential election is a farce. If it was close, the courts would decide who was president. Precedence shows that.
Suppose a constitutional conservative runs for office. He'll likely pull 15% from the republican base and nothing significant from the democrats. Then the democrats win.
Ideally the republicans would then learn that they need to pay attention to those 15% who left them. This would cause the concerns of the Constitutionalist to be addressed, at least with lip service if nothing else. The problem that we have is that there are only two parties and therefor it is too difficult to really make a difference.
For example, a population that is split essentially 50/50 would require that a third party take 34+ percent of the vote to win, thereby ensuring that they wont. In a three party system, it would be only 26%+. This number would be reduced further with more political parties and by doing this the people's concerns could be better addressed.
Erik,
If, only if. "if" is the middle word in life. If my Aunt had balls, she'd be my Uncle.
We can have groundswells of grassroots support for Men like Ron Paul and with our two party system, he gets ignored.
Come April 15, lip service doesn't account for much.
Good job smacking around the straw man Difster. Care to take a crack at "The perfect is the enemy of the good"?
Straw man? How do you figure?
"The perfect" comment amounts to accepting evil as a compromise.
"How about we rape your wife in front of you, but only for 2 minutes?"
Bottom line is almost everything Leviathan does is illegal under their own rules.
The fact that everyone pretends that it doesn't matter doesn't change a damn thing.
And if some POS politician can't hold a single principle other than the thirst to get elected, they ain't getting my vote.
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
That applies just fine when the alternative isn't evil. Pointing to Michael's example above, let's say it was just 1 minute? Is that ok? Not perfect, but that should be acceptable right?
I don't expect perfection from our elected representatives but I cannot accept the notion that I should vote for someone who's principles I consider evil. I'm sure if I looked hard enough, I could find something to disagree with Ron Paul about. However, it would likely be a minor difference of opinion and not a fundamental issue of good vs. evil.
The bottom line is, if you vote for someone you know advocates that which you think is evil, you're endorsing that evil.
Straw man = the argument you made about "a vote for someone other than our candidate is a vote for the other side".
First, this sentiment is hardly ever actually voiced. What you posit is a caricature of the position that third party votes are wasted, or might as well be a vote for the democrats. Many people that express this sentiment intuitively grasp the argument, but have difficulty articulating it, therefore end up saying things like "A vote for the Libertarians is a vote for the Democrats".
The actual argument is that if you're going to vote, there are three tenable positions; 1) Vote for whoever you most align with that has a chance of winning (usually referred to as "single issue voting"). 2) A protest vote (voting for Ron Paul or Mickey Mouse). 3) Voting against a candidate - that is, voting for whoever you think will beat the guy you have a big problem with.
Saying that you should vote for who you most agree with is nonsense, and is a tool that the left often employs to fracture right-wing coalitions (right-wing being defined as anarcho-capitalists, libertarians, fiscal conservatives).
The actual argument goes something like this;
Candidate RightRon is standard issue Republican (low taxes, pro-life, strong defense), candidate LeftLisa is standard issue Democrat (pro-abortion, pro-union), candidate ConstitutionCarl is Libertarian (abolish the IRS, small-government). The leftist hope is that ConstitutionCarl and RightRon split the "right" vote and thus the left wins. The left has zero problem supporting candidates whose world-views are "close enough" and they fully grasp the problems associated with diluting their voting pool. This is why you see leftist coalitions that don't seem to make sense (auto workers teamed with eco-nuts, Baptist ministers teamed with planned parenthood, illegal immigrants teamed with teachers unions) yet these coalitions exist and they're quite powerful.
I suppose the argument can be summed up more accurately as "Pragmatism beats idealism at the ballot box - every time".
Dfister,
Voting for the lesser of two evils is STILL a vote for evil-duh!
MarkyMark
Bill, you're assuming that going slower to Hell is somehow better than the express train.
It's not as though the Neocons like McCain are EVER going to put the car in reverse.
If the Magic Negro brings it all crashing down sooner, we're probably better off in the long run.
Bill,
The entire third party vote, not counting Perot, reliably garners less than 1% of the vote totals, which isn't much of a split and isn't something that a party would do much to foster in order to make the other side lose. And lets remember that the left loses votes to the third parties as well.
Oh, and as for this: "Pragmatism beats idealism at the ballot box - every time" It seems to have worked REAL well for Rove's "Permanent Majority"
Commenting by HaloScan
