That's why I voted third party. It would have been great if a third party candidate won, but more importantly, third party votes send a message to the major parties. If the major parties want my vote, they better do something to earn it. Even more so in a battleground state: hit the major parties where it hurts, and change might happen.
> That's why I voted third party. It would have been great if a third party candidate won, but more importantly, third party votes send a message to the major parties. If the major parties want my vote, they better do something to earn it.
But...they don't. At least, not collectively. Under the status quo system, each major party has preferences, numbered in order (letters distinguish approximately-equal-preference alternatives within the numbered category):
1. We get your vote,
2a. Your vote goes to someone other than the other major party
2b. You don't vote,
3. The other major party gets your vote.
In fact, each major party has a pretty strong incentive to want people that aren't sold on their platform to blame the two-party system and opt out entirely either by not voting or voting third party, since you voting for the other major party is going to be twice as bad for the major party you aren't voting for than not voting or voting third party.
Right, but for those issues where the parties do form a spectrum, playing the spoiler is a smaller but more credible threat from a third party, since voting for the other guy would be worse.
On issues like this one, where party positions seem to depend only on whether it's their guy doing it, I'm not sure what the appropriate strategy is.
> On issues like this one, where party positions seem to depend only on whether it's their guy doing it, I'm not sure what the appropriate strategy is.
It requires looking beyond voting. The only reason issues like you describe exist is because there isn't a sufficiently strong committed electoral constituency around the issue that will vote, run primary challengers, and provide money and boots on the ground for campaign operations around the issue, so that it just becomes a tactical issue of convenience to the major parties.
Voting behavior, alone, isn't going to do anything to change that. Voting is important in a democracy, but it isn't the only -- or even the most important -- form of political participation.
This is correct; I've started putting together a group to look at coordinating such activities (and anything else we can think of): meetup.com/Hack-Government-Bay-Area
It still leaves the direct question - while less important - unanswered: when we do go to vote, what is the optimal approach on this kind of issue?
> It still leaves the direct question - while less important - unanswered: when we do go to vote, what is the optimal approach on this kind of issue?
Voting is a blunt instrument that's very rarely useful -- especially in one election -- at affecting change on any specific issue of this type (that is, one on which the major parties have no real distinction, though they exploit any opportunity to take PR pot-shots at the other party.)
If you haven't changed the landscape by political action before the election so that the issue you are concerned about is no longer that kind of issue, then there isn't an effective voting strategy available.
It's a mixed bag. True that the threat of third parties "stealing" votes pulls the major parties somewhat, but at the same time the direct effect of your vote in the general is less to your favor than if you had voted strategically. I am not convinced regarding which effect dominates.
