Well, I guess I’ll be voting dishonestly this year! If I could instantly elect anybody I wanted to, it would probably be Cynthia McKinney. Her views are much closer to mine than any other candidate. But I’ll be voting for Obama, because McKinney (or any other third party candidate, for that matter) doesn’t even have a trillionth of a chance. It’s not ‘voting for the lesser of two evils’ – I like Obama, don’t get me wrong – but I wish I could, in good conscience, vote for the candidate that best represents my views.
Voting is a funny thing. As it turns out, it is impossible that a vote for more than two candidates be fair. (Consult any political science text for an explanation of this, if you are curious). In the case of our system, where the candidate with the most votes wins, the unfairness is, that a candidate could be elected of whom the majority actually disapproves of! So we rectify this by voting for the candidate for one of the tow big parties that is closest to are views. And, thus our two party system continues, without even a minor challenge to it’s dominance.
I really don’t like this. I feel bad about not supporting the candidate that I really like the most, but I don’t know what else to do! I think the situation might improve if we had runoff elections. (A runoff is a second vote for only the two most popular candidates). I know, I know, runoff elections have their own problems – particularly when one group votes for a candidate that everybody hates in order to ensure their victory, but I feel that it takes more thought, more of a conspiracy to cause unfair results in a runoff election.
Perhaps the best solution would be to change voting systems every other year, but I guess that would just confuse people.
In any case, I’ll be glad when I’m done with the candidate portion of the ballot tomorrow – and voting for the amendments and propositions and questions is fun! It’s just YES or NO. No chance for dishonesty there.
Everybody VOTE!