Stealing Votes?

Alternative parties and independent candidates don’t steal votes.

Libertarians don’t steal votes. Neither do Greens. Democrats and Republicans do, though…by keeping candidates off the ballot, vote fraud (electronic and otherwise), closed debates, and more surreptitiously by making some people think they are the only choices.

Yet what choice is it when they are all too often the same in all important respects? Here’s an illustration of that from 1998:

http://www.kubby.com/commercial/stills.html.

This is why I have dubbed them D/R-oids. .

Some have said, don’t hate the players, hate the game. When it comes to politician D/R-oids, I hate both the players and the game.

Sure, there are a few exceptions, but they only prove the rule.

And that’s why I hereby nominate myself for D/R-oid player hater of the year. . Why? Because none of you bitches would do it for me, that’s why.

posted Sep 9th, 2010 by paulie
  • stephenv

    I inserted the image locally so it wouldn’t be hotlinked and running up someone else’s bandwidth. Also, always include alt text for images.

  • http://www.foraaugusta.net Stuart Richards

    Do whatever you can short of breaking the law to advance the cause of liberty. I can’t blame others for feeling similarly passionate about their cause.

    Also, voting Libertarian doesn’t really accomplish much other than register a protest vote. To really achieve an effect, they have to become a caucus inside one of the two winning camps.

    Or pass proportional representation, in America, which’ll never happen.

    • stephenv

      WINNER TAKES ALL.

      It’s time we understood that this is how politics works NOW.

      • http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/author/pauliecannoli/ paulie

        On the surface. But even “winners” are impacted by the opposition…and not necessarily just the leading opposition either.

    • http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/author/pauliecannoli/ paulie

      voting Libertarian doesn’t really accomplish much other than register a protest vote.

      Voting Socialist 100 years ago achieved quite a bit.

      To really achieve an effect, they have to become a caucus inside one of the two winning camps.

      Caucuses inside the “winning camps” are hampered in some ways that alternative parties are not, and vice versa. There’s a need for both, as well as many other approaches to the struggle. Diversity of tactics, as they say.

  • chrisbennett

    Wrote an essay in my undergrad debunking alternative parties “stealing” votes from the major parties. In conclusion, those votes were never the major parties to begin with.