Dave,
You lost me with "don't waste your vote" and "third-party delusions" and "protest votes."
While there are plenty of supporters for "don't waste your vote", their rationales too often ring that little bit hollow. And, none have responded squarely to me about:
I will not afflict my fellow human beings with either major party. Period. I would not point a gun in your face and demand money from you; I will not depute someone from one of the two major parties to point a gun at you for me under the guise of an election.
No matter which major party held the reigns these last several generations, government power and intrusion went up and freedom went down. Dems, Republicans--didn't matter, each abused their power at our expense, operating for their own interests. They're just two wings of the same party. The "Keep Ourselves in Power Party" or "The Self-Interested Dealing Party."
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
Who cares if the Dems get re-elected and drive the country into the ground, as if the Republicans don't do the same thing, just from a different angle. The angle is still acute, and a crater still results.
They know how much they can get away with as long as they let us keep our guns and bibles. They've been doing it at least since 1913.
Gun rights hardly matter if you let the government pick you clean, drive the economy into the ground, destroy the value of your savings, and burden yourself and your posterity with crushing debt or taxes.
I refuse to be party to it. I have too much respect for my fellow man. I shall not vote for a major party candidate. I did not vote for a major party candidate.
How long are you willing to go on afflicting your family, friends, and neighbors for the sake of gun rights? For the sake of comfortably choosing the lesser of two evils, as opposed to telling both evils to go to hell, and facing them squarely when the time comes.
I agree 100%. Those who say don't vote on him because your wasting your vote are those whom I loose all respect for and want the status quo to stay the same. yet dont let the facts about your vote below effect your stupidity of that idea.
"
To run the numbers, I created a Monte Carlo computer simulation model and ran well over 300,000 simulations. My model has two pretty evenly matched main political parties and three smaller ones that fight over roughly ten percent of the vote total. I defined voting groups, each with probability distributions. With these groups defined, I ran multiple runs of the model at 5,000 iterations (5,000 elections) each while varying the number of total voters.
It turns out that your one vote, and mine too, has a probability of swinging any evenly-matched election based on the following formula: Probability equals 3.64 divided by N, where N is the total number of votes cast. So for a small election, say for a homeowners' association with 100 members, your probability of casting the vote that determines the outcome is about 3.64 percent (or 0.0364). Stated differently, you'd have to vote in 27.5 elections to determine a single one. As we move up to the state and national level, the odds fall dramatically. With 11 million voters in California, where my friend and I live, the probability drops to 3.3 x 10-7 (0.00000033), which means that you'd have to vote in over three million presidential elections to determine the winner in California just once.
Of course, California isn't the whole country. California currently has 55 electoral votes out of a total of 538, with 270 needed to elect a president. Since 1852, when Californians first voted for U.S. president, California has been a key swing state in only two presidential elections. In 1876, California cast 6 electoral votes for Rutherford B. Hayes, who beat Samuel J. Tilden by the razor-thin margin of 185 to 184. In 1916, California cast 13 electoral votes for Woodrow Wilson, who beat Charles E. Hughes by 277 to 254. In either election, if California voters had gone the other direction, the national totals would have followed. In every other presidential election, however, the winner was determined regardless of how Californians voted. By acknowledging that California has been a swing state in only two of its 38 elections (5.3%), we can get to our final answer: A voter in California would have to vote in 57.5 million elections to determine one President of the United States.
Your one vote has the same power to affect the results whether you vote for a major or minor candidate, but a vote for the candidate you respect and agree with gives you the expectation of a better outcome. If you are like me and do take the time and effort to vote, you should put your X beside the candidate you think will be the best president, not the one most likely to beat the guy you dislike. The myth of the wasted third-party vote is just that – a myth. If there is a wasted vote, it is the one cast futilely against the candidate you dislike in an attempt to swing the national election."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/hooper1.html Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com
