A 21-year-old woman (millennial) explains why she's voting for Johnson.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

I think the big assumption/fallacy is that electing a libertarian president or few congress folk will tear the fragile system asunder.  When we just want to win a few battles to turn the tide against ever increasing size of government, domestic surveillance, police statism, taxes, and people who want to silence us and others like the regressive left.

If you were a true libertarian, you would call out right wingers as well for trying to restrict voting rights, tightening immigration laws, marijuana, abortion rights, LGBT rights, and many others.

Police statism and military are favored by far more by right wingers btw. One of right wingers most important values are patriotism and national security after all.

Libertarians tend to most strongly oppose whoever happens to be in power at the moment.

Back in 2004, libertarians spent most of their time attacking Bush's foreign policy, the PATRIOT act, etc and were nowhere near as active opposing tax/regulatory increases from the Democrats. This isn't because libertarians like those things or prefer the Democrats, its because they were the less influential party at the time.

Similar deal to why a lot of libertarians spend more time attacking Obama/Hillary than the Republicans/Trump. Republicans aren't in a position to implement their worse policies at the moment, and unlike Obama, Hillary doesn't even pretend to be an anti-war or civil libertarianish candidate.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

unfortunately for libertarians, marijuana is being legalised across the country and there will be no reason for them to exist anymore.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

First of all, anyone who identifies with a generation instead of a set of values is being ridiculous.

Then, people don't realize the fallacy of voting for someone who has no chance to win a single state.  By definition, first past the post races become two candidate contests, so there is ZERO value in voting for someone who is not going to place first or second in your state.  People are being way too idealistic instead of practical in this election.

[mencken]

If the Republicans ran a more conventional candidate on immigration and foreign policy and/or the Libertarians ran a candidate that could actually articulate libertarian points of view, I would cast my lot with them easily. Alas, this is not the year.

[Badger]

First of all, anyone who identifies with a generation instead of a set of values is being ridiculous.

This X 100. It's almost as bad as identifying one's ideology as "anti-establishment".

[Rules for me, but not for thee]

The 'send a message' idea has been used in the past, but is there any instance where one of the two major parties did anything to respond following an election with a significant 3rd party vote? Have these 'messages' every done anything at all? I can't think of a single example.  

Did the GOP adopt Perot's message after 92 and 96? Did the Dems adopt Nader's after 2000? Seems to me that both parties got back into power without appeasing those voters in any way. In 1968 Southern Dems wanted to send a message to the party with Wallace but two elections later the Dems were back in power and there was no adopting of the Wallace view, if anything it was adopted by the GOP.  Maybe the biggest 'message' candidate was Teddy Roosevelt who split from the GOP and got a quarter of the vote in 1912, but his progressive agenda was not adopted by the party and they were back in power by 1920 in the biggest (PV) landslide ever.


If your goal is strategic voting, maybe this passage will be useful.

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I'm going to vote for the closest person that would produce the outcome I want: Gary Johnson.  If you wanted me to pick a D or R, it would be Trump.  Do you think that's a good idea?

[°Leprechaun]

I don't have to vote for the lesser of two evils. It's as simple as that. That's the message that is "being sent". Just because the message isn't heard, doesn't mean I have to compromise myself. Just because many people are deluded enough to think I will submit to their will and vote the way they want and not the way I must is a message I will not be deluded into tolerating. What an appalling election this is. The idea that anyone can convince me to vote evil is insane. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. Every four years many people do the right thing by refusing to listen to the "lesser of two evils" pseudo logic. It is easily done and understand by those in their right mind. Those who think that they can tell me how to vote are simply not thinking. Those who promote the specious "spoiler" argument don't know what they're talking about. It is easily debunked, but those who don't hear the message are the ones at fault. The remedy is simple but the two parties have a monopoly on the system as long as the minority is a minority. The message is heard; third parties  do win. However, the need for a better "third party" is certainly a reality. Just because something has never happened in the past doesn't mean that it can't happen in the future. The old way is the old way and it get's tiresome to hear the same old specious arguments that we are hearing this year.

[Kalimantan]

It would be great to have a proper third party to vote for. What is strange is that in an era where the two main parties are increasingly being criticised for pulling to their more extremist wings, is that the smallest parties are even further to the left or right. Why can't we have a nice centrist party that actually promises the thing most people want, a sensible economic policy, a sensible foreign policy, a sensible approach to social issues like health and education and housing. Instead we just get pulled from pillar to post and these third parties want to pull us around even more

[IceAgeComing]

a sensible economic policy, a sensible foreign policy, a sensible approach to social issues like health and education and housing.

everyone wants these things; to suggest that those of us on the left (or indeed on the right, although I think that the solutions that they propose are totally wrong), the whole point of politics is that we disagree what exactly a "sensible economic policy" means.  To say that its only boring centrists that have "a sensible economic policy" is quite frankly rather insulting; especially when the default centrist position always seems to be "lets not rock the boat and keep things as they are!!!!". 

Besides any significant third party of the middle won't rise under America's system; since it'd need to get more than 40% in a particular state or district to get representation; and if it couldn't do that then it'd find its vote getting squeezed in every marginal election due to the whole spoiler effect thing.  If America moved towards better ways of electing their politicians (PR for the House and maybe also the Senate as well, national popular vote using AV for the Presidency) then you might see a centre party emerge but it'd be along with other smaller groups on the left and the right, and honestly who knows whether it'd actually manage to stay popular; liberal parties in Europe (who are almost exclusively parties of the centre) have had huge amounts of trouble in recent years losing lots of votes - look at the Lib Dems in the UK or the FDP in Germany (who probably aren't really a party of the centre, but they're seen as such) along with more parties of the populist left and right getting representation.  Why should it be assumed that there are this huge amount of "centrists" who'd back that sort of party in America?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

It would be great to have a proper third party to vote for. What is strange is that in an era where the two main parties are increasingly being criticised for pulling to their more extremist wings, is that the smallest parties are even further to the left or right. Why can't we have a nice centrist party that actually promises the thing most people want, a sensible economic policy, a sensible foreign policy, a sensible approach to social issues like health and education and housing. Instead we just get pulled from pillar to post and these third parties want to pull us around even more

Oh hi Mr Farron

[Kalimantan]

a sensible economic policy, a sensible foreign policy, a sensible approach to social issues like health and education and housing.

everyone wants these things; to suggest that those of us on the left (or indeed on the right, although I think that the solutions that they propose are totally wrong), the whole point of politics is that we disagree what exactly a "sensible economic policy" means.  To say that its only boring centrists that have "a sensible economic policy" is quite frankly rather insulting; especially when the default centrist position always seems to be "lets not rock the boat and keep things as they are!!!!". 

Besides any significant third party of the middle won't rise under America's system; since it'd need to get more than 40% in a particular state or district to get representation; and if it couldn't do that then it'd find its vote getting squeezed in every marginal election due to the whole spoiler effect thing.  If America moved towards better ways of electing their politicians (PR for the House and maybe also the Senate as well, national popular vote using AV for the Presidency) then you might see a centre party emerge but it'd be along with other smaller groups on the left and the right, and honestly who knows whether it'd actually manage to stay popular; liberal parties in Europe (who are almost exclusively parties of the centre) have had huge amounts of trouble in recent years losing lots of votes - look at the Lib Dems in the UK or the FDP in Germany (who probably aren't really a party of the centre, but they're seen as such) along with more parties of the populist left and right getting representation.  Why should it be assumed that there are this huge amount of "centrists" who'd back that sort of party in America?

I suppose its just that a centrist position is one most people can get on board with, there's a bell curve for every policy. Any extremist position by definition is one that a majority will have a problem with. Secondly, it rather depends on how you perceive democracy, whether the point of it is compromise and coming up with a position that most people from all walks of life can support, or whether it is about winning, getting 50%+1 votes and be able to force your point of view on the others. Centrism makes sense but most of us love the idea of winning.

and yes of course, any third party in the middle will have trouble defining itself, but right now I think its far more fertile territory for a third party than the Greens or Libertarians are finding.

[Kalimantan]

It would be great to have a proper third party to vote for. What is strange is that in an era where the two main parties are increasingly being criticised for pulling to their more extremist wings, is that the smallest parties are even further to the left or right. Why can't we have a nice centrist party that actually promises the thing most people want, a sensible economic policy, a sensible foreign policy, a sensible approach to social issues like health and education and housing. Instead we just get pulled from pillar to post and these third parties want to pull us around even more

Oh hi Mr Farron

Mr Ashdown, please