The “A Vote For ________ Is A Vote For ____________” Fallacy

It’s inevitable. If you vote for someone other than Obama or Romney you’re stealing votes from one of them and dooming us all!

Every Election Year it’s the same thing. The politics of fear. And you should be afraid. But not blind. Both sides have always grown the government and made sure their donors were taken care of. Obama’s more of a neo-con than Bush was. More wars. More drones. More police state. Yeah, a real liberal.

Romney isn’t sure what he is, but things won’t change much. Less freedom. And voting for someone other than these two will have people telling you, “A vote for ________ is a vote for _________.”

My answer usually is that’s assuming that Romney is entitled to the opposition vote. He’s as much of a corporatist statist as Obama is. Maybe the Republicans should pick better candidates.

The other day Rebecca from Misbehaved Woman posted this article from The Examiner here on Facebook.

The author goes into detail shooting down these statements.

• Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote because the candidate cannot win.
• Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote because the candidate will not win.
• You have to choose the lesser of two evils. A vote for (insert third party candidate’s name here) is a vote for (insert name of major party candidate the arguer dislikes here).
• Because of Duverger’s Law and the nature of the American system, there will be a two-party system.
• Historically, third parties have not won the Presidency.
• Your third party vote will accomplish nothing.
• If your third party candidate was any good, he/she would have won the primary of one of the two major parties.
• There is not enough time for a third party to achieve sufficient power to influence events.

If you’ve ever been discouraged by those statements click through and read the answers. Conventional Wisdom isn’t always wise. I saved the article. Just because you’ve always done it, doesn’t make it right. Educate yourself on all the candidates.

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