SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the It's-Fake-News-until-the-Fat-Man-Sings dept.
Democrat Doug Jones won a remarkable upset victory over controversial rival Roy Moore in the diehard Republican state of Alabama on Tuesday to win election to the US Senate.
By a margin of 49.5 to 48.9 with 91% of precincts reporting, Jones dealt a major blow to Donald Trump and his efforts to pass tax reform on Capitol Hill. Jones was able to become the first Democrat in a decade to win any statewide office in Alabama by beating Moore, who had faced multiple allegations of sexual assault during a campaign which exposed Republican party faultlines.
The Democratic victory will reduce the Republican majority in the Senate to 51-49 once Jones takes his seat on Capitol Hill. This significantly reduces the margin for error as Republicans attempt to push through a major corporate tax cut.
takyon: The final count is:
Doug Jones - 671,151 votes (49.9%)
Roy Moore - 650,436 votes (48.4%)
Write-ins (total) - 22,819 votes (1.7%)
The margin for an automatic recount in Alabama is 0.5%. Roy Moore has yet to concede.
(Score: 1, Troll) by HiThere on Wednesday December 13 2017, @11:45PM (5 children)
In US elections, third parties are a snare and a delusion. If we had IRC or Condorcet voting, then I'd agree that you should vote for the best candidate. As it is... the only reason to vote for a third party is because you are so disgusted with both of the candidates that have a chance that you might as well not vote, but you have a habit of voting.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:20PM (2 children)
As it is... the only reason to vote for a third party is because you are so disgusted with both of the candidates that have a chance that you might as well not vote, but you have a habit of voting.
That's not true. Those other parties will never have a chance of taking over from either of the dominant parties if no one ever votes for them, plus parties get federal matching funds and other benefits after they get to a certain percentage of the vote.
So, if you live in a place that very reliably votes a certain way, and you're quite sure your vote won't be missed in a particular election (this Jones vs. Moore election is not a good example obviously), then go ahead and vote 3rd party. For instance, if you think the Dems are too centrist or corporate, or you just want to support another party for a change, and you live in Mississippi during a Presidential election, you might as well vote for the Greens or whoever. Your vote for a Democrat candidate will NOT give Mississippi's electoral votes to the Dems because there's just no way MS will choose a Dem in the Presidential election, so you might as well vote for someone else, it won't make a difference to the Dems. Similarly, if you live in DC and normally vote Republican, you're wasting your vote there in the Presidential election as well, so you might as well vote for the libertarians or whoever.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday December 14 2017, @05:46PM (1 child)
I understand your feeling on the matter, and I've felt that way too. But when I look at the history of US politics, all new parties seem to have been founded by splitting one of the major parties after it became totally dominant. Even Teddy Roosevelt couldn't manage to start a new party, and that one was nearly a split.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 14 2017, @06:50PM
True, but that doesn't mean that a small party can't rise to dominant status, in tandem with one of the two dominant parties shooting itself in the foot. It just needs enough people to start voting that way.
The other thing that can happen (and has, in the past) is that one of the smaller parties gets enough popularity and votes at the polls that one of the dominant parties starts copying its stances. This happened with the Socialist party decades ago. But again, people need to actually vote for the smaller party to show support for it.
What I described before is a perfectly safe way (esp. in Presidential races) for you to show support for other parties without the risk of "letting the bad one in". If you live in South Caroline, for instance, there is absolutely zero chance that state is going to vote for the Democratic candidate in the 2020 election, so if you lean left you might as well throw in a vote for one of the 3rd parties if you like them. And if you live in Connecticut, there's absolutely zero chance that state is going to vote for the Republican candidate in 2020, so the same applies there if you lean right. This is really the case in *many* states; only a minority of states are so-called "swing states". It's only those states where you need to actually worry that your 3rd-party vote could help the wrong lizard get in.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:28PM
I agree it's not nearly as effective as it should be, but it's more than just voting out of habit. There's a lot of people who just never bother to vote, and if your reaction to the selections of the major parties is to just not vote for any of them, then you blend into that group. And nobody cares. But if you vote third party, then you're specifically registering as someone who DOES vote but just doesn't like the choices. And you send a message to the major parties that they might be able to pick up your vote if they adopt certain policies. Generally, they probably still don't care if the race isn't all that close, but just look at this one -- if the Republicans could have picked up those third party votes, Moore would have won.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday December 14 2017, @07:03PM
Some good reasons to vote third party:
1. The office in question has been held by a political machine run by one of the major parties for a very long time (e.g. local offices that are routinely won with 96% support in the general election), and while you aren't in agreement with the other major party you do want to shake things up. Having real threats from some kind of third-party challenger helps keep the politicians on their toes even in cases where voting for the other major party would be seen as unthinkable.
2. You genuinely don't find either major party candidate even tolerable, and so your options are to support the third party you agree with, or not vote. Expressing your preference gives you more power than not voting: Either you'll help your preferred third party gain attention or even matching funds, or you'll give the major party closest to you ideologically some idea of what they would need to do to win you over.
That first reason is why I'm a strong supporter of third parties at the local level: Most cities have Democratic machines, many rural areas have Republican machines, and those machines can and should be challenged by presenting what are seen by the voters as reasonable alternatives. For example, I want to see the biggest city nearest me get more Green Party city council members, mostly because the Democrats are way too comfortable and entrenched and end up fairly corrupted as a result.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.