Third parties can’t win because people won’t vote for them because they can’t win because people won’t vote for them.
Pre-Sellouts
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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US elections are a farce so I can’t take them seriously at all. But so is life in the Unitary State of Annexia.
The situation is tragic but voting for corporate state puppets has proven to be a totally ineffective way of dealing with tragedy.
So I pledge to vote for candidates who have no chance of winning while being totally dismissive of the infinitesimal prospect of anything worthwhile ever coming from it.
The Pledged Loser vote, times a few million, laughing in the face of this dismal dark joke of destruction, MAY worry the fraudulent few more than the fearful many.
MAY, but likely won’t, because everything’s gone too far for an easy fix brought by farcical elections.
Bad times are coming whether the R’s or D’s or any other party wins. Individual humans have not demonstrated the intelligence to overcome our mass ignorance. We’re doomed.
So:
“If that’s all there is, my friend, then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is.”
So laugh it up in the face of the coming death and destruction. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We’re all losers in this game, so let’s all vote for candidates we can understand: candidates guaranteed to lose.
Vote for the losing candidate you can live with (or die with); just not one that’s a psychopathic murderer.
This has been a partisan message from the Pledged Loser Voting Coalition.
In America’s northern neighbor, the general ability of one of the two ‘sides’ of political power (Left or Right) to gain and retain power partially correlates with whether there is or is not a fractured opposite side. As a case in point, the 2011 federal election allowed a Conservative majority government to occur (controlling 166 out of 308 seats in the House of Commons), even though the Conservatives, nationally, collected 39.62% of the vote. The ‘Left-to-Moderates’ side of the political spectrum (represented by the NDP, Libs, Bloc, and Greens) captured 60% of votes nationwide, but not in the right locations and not with enough votes towards the ‘right’ candidate.
So strategic voting makes sense in elections wherein everyone can agree there is a valid target to oppose, and can actually create a strategy to support one candidate. But the US seems to have jumped to conclusions completely and a priori agreed that only one candidate (per political ‘side’) is an option.
No, third parties can’t win because the way we hold and fund elections stacks the system against them in ways that are impossible to overcome. Unless and until we make massive changes in the way we hold and fund elections, third parties will rarely be anything other than spoilers.
But, like most “progressives” nowadays, you appear to want to skip the middle steps (all the hard work and time necessary to change the system to one where third parties are viable choices) and go straight to your desired outcome (viable third parties). Never gonna happen.
artiofab
If the Puppet Masters of Power really cared about the will of the people they could use their dictatorial powers of lawmaking to require run off elections if no candidate received more than 50% +1 of the vote.
Of course, that would change the way elections work and destroy the means by which the present legislators won and they don’t like democracy THAT much.
Support the Pledged Loser Voting Coalition.
Americans, you are losers. Time to vote for one of your own. Vote for losers.
….because Bernie Sanders is so effective in office….
Glenn,
“If the Puppet Masters of Power really cared about the will of the people they could use their dictatorial powers of lawmaking to require run off elections if no candidate received more than 50% +1 of the vote.”
First past the post elections in political systems with more than two parties (which are, generally, any actual democracy on the planet) make absolutely no sense except in the sense that they are less expensive and less work than run-off elections. It’s disturbing that a country that spends half the world’s military budget can’t be bothered to sell a fighter plane or two to offer up a few hundred million dollars to allow for run-off elections.
That last pane is a masterpiece, Ted – thanks !…
Henri