Ted Rall likes Dean. No surprise there, but this bit about 3rd party candidates (apparently Ted voted for Nader last time around) struck me (emphasis added):
Heretofore I have opposed strategic voting tactics. When citizens vote for candidates because they seem likely to win, it creates a winner-takes-all aggregation of support. That subverts democracy's underlying assumption: that people vote for the man or woman they'd most like to see win. At its worst, pick-the-winner voting elevates any candidate lucky enough to enjoy an early jump in the polls to premature, and possibly undeserved victory. Let the electorate vote for politicians whose ideas they like best and let the chads hang where they may.
Now back in the day, I remember learning in my Intro to Political Science course that the US has a "winner take all" system. It's got nothing to do with who you vote for. It's got to do with the system. There are other systems in the world where people get proportional representation, so that you end up with a bunch of smaller parties, which then tend to join into coalitions, etc. So the Greens get 10% of the vote, they get 10% of the parliamentary seats, and maybe get a say in who's prime minister. News flash to Ted: that's not the way it works here in the good old US of A.
Now I'm all for voting your conscience, and in a state like New York Ted's vote for Nader wouldn't have hurt Gore's chances any more than my vote for him in Georgia would have...albeit for different reasons. But it's important to realize that in this country it truly is a "winner take all" system, and the guy who's both the closest match to your views and has a chance of winning is really the person who should get your vote.
Posted by Jason at November 26, 2003 09:43 AM