The Myth of the Third Party Solution

[TaraJo]

Right, so rather the devil you know. If you've decided to vote -against- the candidate you don't want rather than voting -for- the candidate that you do I can hardly see the point in complaining about the system. You're the one gaming it.......and you're getting out of the system exactly what you put in, less of what you don't like..but not really more of what you do. How else is it going to play out if those are the metrics you vote by? So maybe you're afraid that others wouldn't vote similarly? Boohoo. If you vote for your guy and they lose..boohooo. Other people would complain if their guy lost (they don't already?) boohoo. There are always winners and losers.

Suppose that our system was set up so that a minimum of 8 people had to run for president, and of those 8, 6 had platforms that revolved around something you abhorred. How do you propose to vote against the candidate you don't want (in truth you're voting against the issue on the platform, right?), and how do you avoid the problem you mentioned (won the election despite low overall support) by voting for the candidate that you do want?

My suggestion was an automatic-run off between the top two candidates if nobody got at least 50% of the popular vote. If you don't want to vote for either Obama or Romney, you don't have to, but in the run off, you have to vote for one of those top two candidates or your vote simply doesn't count. I suppose an alternative vote could be another valid option, too, but, again, it might have to be combined with a run off system as well.