It may be so clear cut in the general election but the primaries are not so in several states. Washington has been vote-by-mail since before I was old enough to vote but the Democrats still hold caucuses to choose their nominees. If you want your voice to count you have to give up an entire Saturday to do so (if you're lucky enough to not work that day of course) and while there supposedly is an affidavit form to fill out if you can't attend it remains to be seen how many of those will actually be taken into consideration. For me personally. I won't vote for Hillary if she's nominated. I'll vote third party. And fuck you if you tell me I'm throwing away my vote, you're part of the problem. So really, in a lot of states it comes down to "are you going to fill out this form and put a stamp on it or are you going to let Trump win?
I'm aware of that. But our two party system is terrible and I'm not going to vote for a candidate from one of those parties if they're both terrible choices. If more people felt the same way AND we changed the way our elections work we might have a more productive government.
Driving in a snowstorm is terrible, too, but you don't improve it by bouncing off the guardrails. If the snow let up AND the road wasn't so icy, it might not suck so hard. But that's about as likely to happen as it is that the 2-party system will be changed by voting third party.
My first response to this article was: wow if that is what Nader did what an ass. Then I remembered that I must also be an ass . I have joked many times among friends that all the democrats should start voting republican if they really want change because if undiluted republican governing ideas were put into action and the results were terrible then people would be more likely to want the opposite pendulum swing and society would move much farther left in a possibly shorter time frame. I said it as a joke, but damn, some people actually adopt that as a political strategy.
All have donated the maximum $2,000 to Nader's campaign since April, records show. http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/GOP-donors-funding-Nader-Bush-supporters-give-2708705.phpBut the financial records show that $23,000 in checks of $1,000 or more have come from loyal Republicans. Among those who have given recently to Nader are Houston businessman Nijad Fares, who donated $200,000 to President Bush's 2000 inaugural committee; Richard J. Egan, the former ambassador to Ireland, and his wife, Pamela, who have raised more than $300,000 for Bush; Michigan developer Ghassan Saab, who has given $30,000 to the RNC since 2001; and frozen food magnate Jeno Paulucci, and his wife, Lois, who have donated $150, 000 to GOP causes since 2000 alone.
Voting third party in a general election will not likely get a particular candidate elected but I would not go so far to say that it does not change anything. Voting third party seems to be effective at accomplishing one goal: pushing the the Republican and Democratic parties further right and left respectively. Recent examples include Bernie Sanders support pushing Hillary into a further left position on trade agreements in the primary and Anti establishment Trump and Cruz supporters splitting republican support