politics

So we have been saying this since I was a kid, a third party is a wasted vote. Next time around will be our chance! Well. When? We just going to always push off voting third party until democrats stop hiding and go full republican?

This is why I included "ignorant" among the list of terms in my previous comment. I'm not using it as an insult; yours is a popular opinion, but it displays a fundamental lack of understanding about how the US election system works.

A third party is a wasted vote, because that's literally how the system works. It's not something people say to discourage you from voting or to keep the Big Two in power. It's just a fact of the rules of the game. Voting third party in hopes that it will change the game is as useful as picking up the soccer ball with your hands in hopes that maybe this time the ref will allow it. The rules just don't allow for that.

To be clear, I'm not saying this because I like the system. I'm not defending the system. I'm just highlighting the truth of it. The rules we have are crap, designed by people hundreds of years ago who didn't know any better. It was the best they had at the time, and here we are 250 years later desperately in need of a rules update... But that still doesn't change the rules!

In our FPTP system, one of the Big Two parties will win. Period. If you want that to change (I know I do), the time to do that is in between election cycles. You will never ever change the political system by miraculously voting in a 3rd party. Even if you could somehow get 100% of the country to unanimously vote for a 3rd party president, all you would have is a lame duck president. You would not change the makeup of the legislature, which is the part of our government responsible for making the rules. So if you want to change those rules, you do so through the legislature, not by electing an outsider president. You need to spend the period in between election cycles petitioning, writing, calling, and contacting your legislative representatives every way possible to convince them to support election reform measures. Then and only then will there be meaningful discussion about changing the rules into something better; something where you can actually vote your heart or for the person who best represents your views rather than just a person from party A or B. In other words, if you want to play a version of soccer where you can use your hands, the time to do that is before you play, not mid-game. The same goes for elections.

If you don't believe me, just look into how US elections work. There are so many great explanations about the math and the game theory that makes them function the way they do. Third parties are a wasted vote, not because of any cynicism or pessimism or nihilism; they are because the math literally works out that way. Worse, any vote for a third party candidate actually aids the candidate you dislike. That is to day, if you'd rather Biden beat Trump, your vote for candidate C mathematically actually aids Trump. So yes, third party candidates really do spoil the election, and third party votes are actually shooting yourself in the foot.

So let's change the system, and let's do it the only way laws get changed in this country: by petitioning our representatives. Not by pinning our hopes on a zero-chance candidate and actually supporting the worse candidate by wasting our vote.