3rd party voting is largely a wasted vote in First Pass the Post [0] systems like the US.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

Perhaps. If a third party candidate gets 5% of the vote, they're eligible to draw public money from the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. That could be huge.

And aside from that, numbers build legitimacy. If a third party is obviously not going to win, but gets 10% of the vote, we start taking it seriously, and it can build on that success over multiple elections, just like individual candidates do.

The 'wasted vote' trope assumes that the sole point of a vote is to elect a candidate. Your vote is also an act of free speech - it can send a message to your fellow citizens and your government. Even in our stupid two-party system, politicians watch which way the wind is blowing.

Even if the number of 3rd party votes is so small that the message is inaudible, it's still an act of free speech.

The thing is, if a third party gets enough of the vote, it gets the attention of the major parties. Remember Ross Perot's Reform party? They were the only ones talking about the budget deficit at the time. Then, after eight years of Bill Clinton (of the party generally considered less fiscally responsible), there was somehow a budget surplus.

An economic contraction and a tax cut then combined to eliminate the surplus, but it still shows that third-party votes can have power.

Also, Federal elections aren't the only kind: third party candidates win elections with some frequency at lower levels, because at those levels the person can matter more than the party.

You missed the point. Of course whatever 3rd party you vote for won't make it. But it's a registered vote, and it takes a vote away from the two parties.

How is voting for a Rep or Dem not a wasted vote, considering what they're doing to us?

3rd parties aren't fucking us (yet). Vote for whoever isn't fucking us, not because they might win (they won't), but to register the protest.

No he didn't miss the point, you did. You didn't read his link and your comment shows that.

> To a greater extent than many other electoral methods, the first-past-the-post system encourages tactical voting. Voters have an incentive to vote for one of the two candidates they predict are most likely to win, even if they would prefer another of the candidates to win, because a vote for any other candidate will likely be "wasted" and have no impact on the final result.

> The position is sometimes summed up, in an extreme form, as "All votes for anyone other than the second place are votes for the winner", because by voting for other candidates, they have denied those votes to the second place candidate who could have won had they received them.

With rare exceptions, chances are negligible that anyone but a Democrat or Republican are going to win. I know this. I'm not voting 3rd party because I think there's any chance at all that a 3rd party could win.

I vote 3rd party because I prefer to vote instead of not voting (exercising my right and civic duty), and because it's repugnant to me to give my vote to the Dem or Rep party. I really don't want to choose the lesser of two evils, I prefer to oppose them both, however feeble my voice may be.

You're still missing the point and still don't appear to understand the consequences of your actions. By not tactically voting in a first past the pole system, you are actually helping the guy you'd least like to win; you are actively making things worse. It doesn't matter than you like neither of them, as they're different you'd clearly like one less than the other and he's the one you're helping win. You aren't opposing both of them, you're helping the one you'd least like to win, your little "protest" vote may as well be a vote for the worst candidate.

> I prefer to oppose them both, however feeble my voice may be.

This little act of ego is helping ruin the country; thanks.

By the way, note that the article calls any vote for the winner in excess of the number needed to win a "wasted" vote. It's a technical term with an unfortunate double meaning.

Don't vote for the winner, it's a potentially wasted vote (according to the article).