MoreCommonCents OP t1_itihm00 wrote on October 23, 2022 at 9:56 PM

Reply to comment by Anaxamenes in Freedom of choice... for who we may vote for... or against by MoreCommonCents

More than 2 choices on the actually ballot is of course essential. And anything that moves us towards that is a good move. The battle with regards to third party candidates is the age old argument that if you don't vote for someone who can actually win you are wasting your vote altogether. And that is why people continually vote for someone they do not support in an effort to prevent someone they really are concerned might win if they do not. If given the choice to cast a negative vote for that candidate I think they would take it as they are less concerned about which of the other choices might win.

So how does one vote when they really don't want one candidate to win? I guess they rank them last, and hope that everyone is clever enough to do the same. If voters actually did that they could effectively cast a negative vote as well as casting preferential votes to anyone other than that last choice.

Anaxamenes t1_itj4oj4 wrote on October 24, 2022 at 12:46 AM

You don’t rank them last, you don’t rank them at all. Essentially that is a vote against them because your vote will go to someone else no matter what. The best part is it allows for third party candidates. You don’t like your party candidate? No problem, you can vote for a different person first and if that person doesn’t end up getting it, you might get your second or third choice but they would still be much better than getting the person you felt you should use your vote to vote against.