Voting third party will not elect a third party candidate yet, but it will more clearly show your desire for change and has a better chance of meaningfully affecting the behavior of the dominant parties or other voters.
Agreed, but it’s only under fairly specific circumstances that it’s effective (i.e. worth it for the rational voter) in such a system. Post-war Britain managed to delete the Liberal party (or maybe just rename) but they ended up in the same boat after a while. If you can’t respect ranked preferences you end up with two big parties that try to represent a bit more than half the country, with all the nuance that allows.
That’s all true, yes. I just think it’s rational to vote third party if you were planning on not voting at all because it has some positive benefits and no real downsides.
I read the comment, it’s cogent but it’s replying to things someone else said so it’s a bit hard to apply it to what I’ve been saying in this thread in detail. TL;DR: Voting third party is valid for the reasons you outline.
Voting third party will not elect a third party candidate yet, but it will more clearly show your desire for change and has a better chance of meaningfully affecting the behavior of the dominant parties or other voters.
Agreed, but it’s only under fairly specific circumstances that it’s effective (i.e. worth it for the rational voter) in such a system. Post-war Britain managed to delete the Liberal party (or maybe just rename) but they ended up in the same boat after a while. If you can’t respect ranked preferences you end up with two big parties that try to represent a bit more than half the country, with all the nuance that allows.
That’s all true, yes. I just think it’s rational to vote third party if you were planning on not voting at all because it has some positive benefits and no real downsides.
here’s a longer comment (that links to another comment as well) i wrote about all this stuff
I read the comment, it’s cogent but it’s replying to things someone else said so it’s a bit hard to apply it to what I’ve been saying in this thread in detail. TL;DR: Voting third party is valid for the reasons you outline.