(08-21-2020, 04:51 PM)HandsomeRob86 Wrote:

(08-21-2020, 04:41 PM)mikesez Wrote: It's a protest vote regardless.  your Candidate is not going to win, they only exist to put certain ideas out there. You should never consider casting a protest vote unless you are truly ambivalent about which of the two main party candidates will win. if you think the two main candidates are equally bad, then go ahead and cast that protest vote. but if you think one is more evil than the other, you're pretty much ethically obligated to vote for the lesser of the two evils.

This line of thinking is why there are only 2 major parties. Every candidate is equally valid on their own. If enough people ‘protest’ vote a third party can win. The two party system is how the Dems ended up so extreme in the first place. Choosing not to support that (two party) is a reasonable thing, but I admit it’s scarier to vote 3rd party when you see some of the positions adopted by the mainline. I am still not certain how I will vote, other than Biden will not be it.

In my more than 30 but less than 40 years on this planet, the only independent candidates who ever won a statewide race are Jesse Ventura, Angus King, and Bernie Sanders. That's just three examples. But a third party candidate for president has to win not one but between 20 and 30 statewide races. All at the same time. the last third-party candidate to win the presidency of the United States was Abraham Lincoln in 1860. But in most of the states he ran in, he was one of only two candidates on the ballot. 


in each of these three cases, polling indicated that the candidate had a good chance to win, well in advance of the election date.

if the polls indicate that it's actually a three-way race, sure, voting for the third party might not be a waste. Otherwise, it expresses that you don't care which candidate wins

---