Why vote?
Ever since I started voting, I’ve voted in either red states or blue states. I’ve never missed an election. But why bother voting, since I’m outnumbered?
Well, for one thing, millions of people have fought and died for the right to vote. I honor their memory by exercising my franchise.
Beyond that sentimental reason, though, there’s the reality that sometimes what seems to be inevitable isn’t.
In 2025, Democratic voters voted in deep red states and red districts. What was the result?
“Democrats, buoyed by Trump’s unpopularity and a fired-up base, flipped 21 percent of all the GOP-held seats that were on the ballot throughout 2025.
“According to Bolts’ analysis, Democrats gained 25 state Senate and House seats that were held by the GOP, out of the 118 that were resolved this year in regular or special elections.”
Much of the time, I’m voting for the lesser of two evils. I’ve yet to encounter a metaphysically perfect candidate.
In a first-past-the-post voting system like ours, more than two parties is unstable. If you want a system in which more than two parties can meaningfully contest the control of government, you want a parliamentary system, like most industrialized democracies on the planet. That would require amending the Constitution. That, like voting for “third party” candidates in America, is just magical thinking.
Let’s be clear: they’re not “third party candidates,” they’re vanity candidates. They’re not representing a 3rd *party*. If they were real 3rd party candidates, there would be an actual, you know, 3rd party behind them.
Ultimately, if a 3rd party dog actually caught the car, s/he couldn’t do anything. You have to have a large number of people from your party in the legislature from your party in order to make laws. Nobody seems to think this through, but that’s how our system works (when it works).
If we had a ranked choice voting system, at least you could vote 3rd party and your vote could still count in the actual contest, which will always come down to the two major party candidates.
Democrats made major gains in 2025 elections
My pie in the sky thought: Only publicly funded elections. Ranked choice voting. Parties which get on the ballot get funding, but additional funding is based on first choice vote, not who wins final vote.
Billionaires sure do love this line of thinking. If enough people vote for billionaire shills and against their own interests, it gives their shills the patina of legitimacy. Fact is, “if God had wanted us to vote, s/he would have given us candidates.”
Actually, I do encourage people to vote…against Billionaire shills and FOR candidates not bought and paid for. The more votes for third parties, the more dissent gets registered. And a pro-people candidate might just win…think Evo Morales in Bolivia who defeated the corporate candidates who had privatized water and had even prohibited people from collecting their own rainwater.
@John,
LOL! I don’t let billionaires live in my head. They each only get one vote and there aren’t that many of them.
What billionaires love or don’t love doesn’t interest me. I don’t let them control my vote. YMMV.
Right…as if Miriam Adelson’s $100 million donation to Trump made no difference!!! That’s why she made the donation…because each Billionaire gets to cast only one vote!!! [sarcasm]
@John,
Made no difference to me. Did it affect your vote?
Billionaires Buying Elections: They’ve Come to Collect
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-buying-elections-theyve-come-to-collect/
@John,
I’m not the subject of this post or this thread. I deleted a previous post because of your personal attacks on me, and I edited this post to delete the off-topic comments about me. Your personal attacks on me are trolling and will be deleted. Stay on topic, John.
Joel:
I agree with you. Do what you need to do with a personal comment.
I believe the above data is from Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S Presidential Elections
How many potential voters do we have, registered voters, and how many voted in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
At what point do we say, no you can not run for president?
Many also ignore the necessity of playing defense (voting against instead of for candidates). Also the necessity of identifying and supporting the lesser evil. An example would be those who dropped out over objection to Biden’s support of Netanyahu without considering the harm that would be done in that connection and many others by Trump’s election. Refusal to deal with comparative evils is the triumph of romanticism over reality.
@Jack,
“Refusal to deal with comparative evils is the triumph of romanticism over reality.”
Well-said!
My favorite quote on this idea:
“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
If God had wanted us to vote, s/he would have given us candidates.”
They did. The vast majority of Americans long ago abdicated their responsibility as informed voters in which vacuum an entire class of political candidates has risen up to do the dirty. “Parties” don’t mean squat. Bread and circuses, beer and football, feeding lions to the christians … it’s all part and parcel with managing the population. For whatever reason, and there are many valid as invalid, Americans have chosen to let somebody else run the show
It is said some old Chinese guy wrote a book about it 2,500 years ago …
It’s possible that a thin slice of third-party voters are voting to build that party for the future, but seems likely that many more are registering a protest against the two major candidates. People are free to infer whatever they want about what these voters might otherwise have done but there are no guarantees the inferences are good ones. Consider that without a third-party candidate on the ballot that they still could approach their vote as a protest. Maybe the third-party candidate actually limits the electoral damage these voters might do under other circumstances. I think ranked choice might not do a lot of good in a general election if third-party vote is thought of as heavily a protest against one major party presumed to be a natural political home for voters opting for a specific third candidate. These people aren’t dumb and will quickly figure out that the manner their protest will register is to put the opposing major candidate higher in the sequence than the candidate they are most protesting against. Maybe better just to leave it alone and accept that a third-party vote at least isn’t a vote for the other major candidate.
Eric:
Is the chart I put up that difficult to understand? Also it was not one third party. It was multiples. An excellent ploy by Republicans.
@Eric,
” . . . a third-party vote at least isn’t a vote for the other major candidate.”
A third-party vote is the same as not voting at all. There’s literally no difference.
“It’s possible that a thin slice of third-party voters are voting to build that party for the future . . .”
The way to build a third party is to run candidates for that party in local, state and national elections all across the country. That’s what actual, you know, parties do. Voting for a presidential vanity candidate every four years is not party-building.
Bill, I understand your chart, but I think it is a union of 51 different election results. I don’t think any of the 51 ballots had anywhere near this many candidates. All 51 certainly have ballot access rules and that list qualified at least somewhere. You can infer what you want, but all I can feel certain of is all the voters with fewer votes than Trump or Harris could have voted for them and chose not to. Joel, voting for a third-party candidate is certainly not “not voting”, but my point a couple days ago was simple: you can include voting for any candidate other than the winner in that line of thinking. I do get your point that third-party votes feel like non-votes if you assess the “real” choice as binary, but my point is that this kind of conceptual non-vote for candidate C is better for B than registering the protest as a vote for A. I think your views on how to advance third-parties is accurate, but convincing voters to think that way and then vote for a Democrat or a Republican is the job of the campaign, not some kind of obligation of the voter. My view of the data is the 2 major parties do that well: third-party voting is very low. In the end though, all these people voted and neither Trump nor Harris convinced them they were the best choice. This, to me, is significant as practically none of them doubted one or the other major candidate would win. Those protesting with their votes likely had a great deal of intensity of feeling behind that protest. I can’t prove anything, but I think many protestors had a sense of betrayal and if the only protest available is the other major candidate, what would they have done?
@Eric,
” . . . if you assess the “real” choice as binary . . .”
No need for the scare quotes. In the US first-past-the-post system, the real choice *is* binary. Full stop.
I long ago abandoned emotion in financial decisions and in the voting booth.
By the way, I recall one frequent commentator here who last year declared that if somehow Biden got forced off the ticket, for certain they would not vote for the Democrat that was then nominated. That person had no obligation to follow through with it and it’s their own business, but that’s what a sense of betrayal brings. It’s visceral in many cases.