Other parties?

[Rvaughn]

Scanning down through the posts in the Politics forum, looks like all the talk is Trump and Hillary, GOP and Democrats. Anybody here like any of the other parties, such as Constitution, Green, Libertarian? Anybody brave enough to vote for one?

[Ed Pettibone]

[Haruo]

I never vote until Election Day. Here in Washington State, there are no polls to go to, and there is a great deal of pressure from both parties and government to vote early, but I refuse. I would not rule out voting for a third party candidate this year, though without any expectation of electing her, or even of influencing however tangentially the outcome of the election. I am more likely to do so if I am reasonably sure who is going to win my state's electors.

[Rvaughn]

Haruo, what do you mean by "there are no polls to go to?"

I have not voted for a majority party candidate in possibly 28 years. By now I have long since lost the "fear factor" in choosing for whom I will vote. To me that seems the way most people are voting this year. Among my friends and acquaintances I know of not one who will admit to preferring Trump and I know of few who think Hillary is the best candidate. Yet among these nearly all are voting for one or the other simply to try to keep the other out of office. That kind of thinking is part of what keeps us from getting better candidates, imo.

[Haruo]

[Tim Bonney]

I would be voting for Hillary even if Donald Trump hadn't crawled out from under his rock. Now I just do so with a greater sense of urgency.

[Sandy]

From a historical perspective, what it takes for a third party candidate to flourish is an issue or motivation that moves people ahead of, or to the side of one of the existing parties. In 1968, George Wallace ran on a platform not unlike that of Donald Trump, a populist, segregationist appeal to blue collar workers and white southerners opposed to the Democratic party support for the Civil Rights Act. His intention was to keep either Humphrey or Nixon from getting enough electoral votes to throw the election to the House, and had he carried Tennessee and North Carolina, and done a fraction of a percent better in Missouri, he'd have succeeded. Perot in 92 had personal money, and got enough exposure to pull voters from both candidates, Democrats not sure about Clinton, and Republicans disgusted with Bush's tax policy. He did carry a few counties, and actually finished second in a couple of states. When he ran in 96, he got about half the votes that he had in 92.

Trump's supporters are really a third party movement that has taken over the GOP, mainly because the rest of the support, the 55% of the party that didn't vote for Trump in the primaries, was diffused between too many candidates. They've picked up some support from those who will vote for the GOP candidate no matter what, but if a more establishment-connected candidate jumped in the race now, like Romney or Kasich, they'd immediately draw the preference of a majority of Republican voters. The same can probably be said for Bernie Sanders, who would not have a majority of Democrats, but would draw a significant number.

[Shawn Koester]

Since I was 18, my affiliation was, has and continues to be with the Green Party. I don't agree with either the center right (Reagan Republicanism) of the Democratic Party or the neo fascist tendencies of the Republican Party. My vote for 2016 as it was in 2012 is for Jill Stein. She's a woman of principle- for, by and with the people rather than serving their corporate overlords like Trump or Clinton. By coronating Hillary Clinton, the Democrats are not only undermining democratic process but they are essentially handing the election to the Republicans paving the way for a President Donald Trump. Clinton has just similar dis-favorable ratings like Trump, she is currently under criminal investigations and if Trump gets elected because of the Democrats malfeasance and Clinton's corruption, they (the Democratic establishment) have no one but themselves to blame. But maybe it will take a destructive leader like Trump to wake up the complacent and indifferent American electorate from their sleep. People should vote for people based on platforms and vote for people they believe in rather than being forced, or threatened, or voting because you oppose someone. The other candidate is boogeyman farce will not stand in a Democracy. A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil. The reason I don't vote for the Democratic Party is because while they are socially liberal, they are too beholden to corporations and trickle-down economics and have a fierce interventionist/militarist foreign policy. I respect people's right to vote differently and according to their moral and social compass/conscience but I refuse to be bullied into believing in a candidate I don't believe in.

[Haruo]

[Rvaughn]

[Tim Bonney]

I normally vote party first since it is actually the two parties that control everything. But if I were GOP I'd have to jump ship this year. Thankfully instead of nominating a wacko like Trump, the Dems lead by nominating the first woman by one of the two parties. It is long past time.

[Haruo]

I was raised in a family and a church where God was more or less tacitly assumed to be the silent partner of the left wing of the Democratic Party. My dad took student groups down to Alabama and Georgia to march and meet with Dr. King; was a charter member of the local branch of CALCAV; and did radio interviews on behalf of Alice Franklin Bryant's attempt to contest Henry M. Jackson's senate seat in the primary. In seventh grade I was a voluntary racial transfer student, being bused several miles from my almost 100% white neighborhood junior high to one that was 97% nonwhite (72% Negro). In sixth grade we skipped school for a couple days to go to Freedom School on behalf of school integration and open housing (i.e. mandatory end to redlining). This was all done with Jesus' backing and, in a sense, by His instigation.

My trust in God and Jesus took a severe beating in 1968, when both of my parents were killed in a car crash. My aunt and uncle who took in the four of us Ross kids attended a Presbyterian church where a great many of those in leadership and teaching positions felt about Nixon much the way I had been raised to feel about the Kennedys and King. As I say, my trust in God and Jesus took a severe beating, but my general support for left-leaning positions and principles remained staunch through the succeeding fifteen years of unbelief and intoxication. God restored himself to a position of trust in my life in 1984, when I was saved from alcohol. Coming back to Jesus took a little longer, but in 1990 the Catholic theologian Hans Küng convinced me that I should be baptized, and in January of 1991 I was, at Fremont Baptist where I still hold membership. Fremont does not have a political agenda in a party-line sense the way I perceived University Baptist and Rose Hill Presbyterian to have in my youth.

Now in my sixties, looking back, I see that through my two-plus decades at Fremont (and 3-plus decades in AA) I have become much broader in my willingness to identify the hand of a guiding God. And much less inclined to staunch support of party or position. I can be strongly supportive of things like gender-neutral toilets without feeling a need to assume that those opposed are flying in the face of what God calls them to support. I don't think God is a single-issue voter or has a one-size-fits-all prescription for achieving holiness. FWIW. To be continued as needed...

[Tim Bonney]

Haruo, the UMC is one of those churches that believes that actions are more important than un-acted on beliefs. So I really identify with the social action history of your family. In many of the Baptist churches I was connected to Church and State separation was used (or misused) to basically take a hands off approach on all social issue claiming that this was the role of government entirely and solely. I never found compartmentalizing my faith that way to be helpful or attractive.

[Shawn Koester]

[KeithE]

I’m with you Shawn. I know they won’t win unless Bernie jumps into a Third Party.

I would love to see a straight popular vote - Stein, Sanders, Clinton, Johnson, Trump. I betcha Bernie or Hillary would win.

Too busy to post much here or even watch much of the convention.

[Sandy]

The way our government is structured almost precludes third parties. The indirect election of the chief executive through the electoral college, and the requirement that they get a majority of the electoral vote makes it hard for a third party to form and gain much in the way of traction. The other problem is that we have fifty separate systems for conducting elections. In some states, it is easy for independent candidates to get on the ballot, while in others, it's not, and the primary system for nominating is also skewed state by state. Some allow open voting, others require you to be registered with a party, and limit your primary vote to that party. Third parties sometimes have difficulty gathering the resources, and meeting those requirements.

I sometimes find myself identifying more closely with political parties that have formed in Europe, or elsewhere in the world, than I do with the two standard American parties, or with some of the third party splinters. The whole idea of coalition government is fascinating. There's too much polarization here right now for that to work well.

[Dave Roberts]

The sad reality of the electoral college today is that fewer than ten states will determine the next President. In a number of states, the outcome is almost certain based on past election records. They will either continue in the red or blue columns. That means that most of the campaigning will take place in those states that could be a toss-up, and 50.1% of the popular vote translates into all their electoral votes going to the winning candidate. The popular vote is, IMHO, a far more equitable system and would mean that the campaign would play out nationwide rather than in just a few media markets.

[Rvaughn]

[Sandy]

The electoral vote was initially designed to lessen the impact of the vote in areas where population was concentrated. I don't think the founding fathers envisioned the growth of the country, the number of states, or the size of population when they put it in place to even the playing field between bigger and smaller states. On the other hand, making the election go with the popular vote alone would sent the campaign to the suburbs of the big cities for the media attention and that's where the votes are.

Pennsylvania is considered a reliably "blue" state, because Democratic party registration is about a million more than Republican registration. Elections here are decided in Southeastern PA, around Philadelphia. Almost 70% of the population lives inside an arc that runs from north of Allentown-Bethlehem, just west of Harrisburg, and hits the Maryland line about 20 miles south of York. If the Democrats get good turnout in Bucks, Delaware and Chester counties, and in the city of Philadelphia, they carry the state. I think if the popular vote was the deciding factor, then cities like Philly would be bypassed for places where it's closer.