Libertarian Party Press Release

[mport1]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
...The myth of the wasted third-party vote is just that – a myth. If there is a wasted vote, it is the one cast futilely against the candidate you dislike in an attempt to swing the national election."
Link

I will NEVER vote Democratic or Republican, unless the candidate actually holds libertarian ideals.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice hand, sir!

[/ QUOTE ]

Ty.

[AKQJ10]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Excellent post! This deserves its own thread. Please start a new thread with this post.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you, but to which post are you referring?

[/ QUOTE ]

Apparently this one, "On the wasted vote (there is no such thing - unless you don't vote for your most preferred party)."

FYI If you click the link with the name of the author, it will bring up the post nominally being replied to. This can be deceiving because people just glom their post on using the instant reply feature, so it looks like they're replying to the post before theirs. But in this case I'm pretty sure they really liked your content. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[SuperUberBob]

[ QUOTE ]
As a lifetime Republican, I’m fed up. This press release just adds to my overall frustration, with the two party system.

I’m contacting my elected GOP officials and my state GOP headquarters and letting them know I’m leaving the party. I will stop contributing and voting for the GOP.

Check out this funny video!

Politician Removal Service

[/ QUOTE ]

I have officially jumped and have become a libertarian. The GOP isn't just grand anymore.

I wish the libertarian party had a stronger stance on defense, but I like their domestic policies for the most part.

[mport1]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
As a lifetime Republican, I’m fed up. This press release just adds to my overall frustration, with the two party system.

I’m contacting my elected GOP officials and my state GOP headquarters and letting them know I’m leaving the party. I will stop contributing and voting for the GOP.

Check out this funny video!

Politician Removal Service

[/ QUOTE ]

I have officially jumped and have become a libertarian. The GOP isn't just grand anymore.

I wish the libertarian party had a stronger stance on defense, but I like their domestic policies for the most part.

[/ QUOTE ]

First, thanks for the tip AKQJ10. I'm kinda new to using the forums although I am constantly reading them. Here is the topic I started on the subject: Link

To the quote above, we do have a strong stance on defense, however we do not believe we should be waging wars throughout the world and stationing our military all over for seemingly no reason. The only thing this causes is more conflict and violence. Our aggressive foreign policy was one major reason for the terrorist attacks. If we had much more of a defensive (but strong) army and stayed out of other people's business, we would be in a much better situation than we are presently.

Glad you jumped ship though, I have talked to many others who have been doing the same thing [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[bkholdem]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Excellent post! This deserves its own thread. Please start a new thread with this post.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you, but to which post are you referring?

[/ QUOTE ]

This one:

On the wasted vote (there is no such thing - unless you don't vote for your most preferred party):

"It turns out that your one vote, and mine too, has a probability of swinging any evenly-matched election based on the following formula: Probability equals 3.64 divided by N, where N is the total number of votes cast. So for a small election, say for a homeowners' association with 100 members, your probability of casting the vote that determines the outcome is about 3.64 percent (or 0.0364). Stated differently, you'd have to vote in 27.5 elections to determine a single one. As we move up to the state and national level, the odds fall dramatically. With 11 million voters in California, where my friend and I live, the probability drops to 3.3 x 10-7 (0.00000033), which means that you'd have to vote in over three million presidential elections to determine the winner in California just once.

Of course, California isn't the whole country. California currently has 55 electoral votes out of a total of 538, with 270 needed to elect a president. Since 1852, when Californians first voted for U.S. president, California has been a key swing state in only two presidential elections. In 1876, California cast 6 electoral votes for Rutherford B. Hayes, who beat Samuel J. Tilden by the razor-thin margin of 185 to 184. In 1916, California cast 13 electoral votes for Woodrow Wilson, who beat Charles E. Hughes by 277 to 254. In either election, if California voters had gone the other direction, the national totals would have followed. In every other presidential election, however, the winner was determined regardless of how Californians voted. By acknowledging that California has been a swing state in only two of its 38 elections (5.3%), we can get to our final answer: A voter in California would have to vote in 57.5 million elections to determine one President of the United States.

This ignores voting error and fraud, but even with them, there is still a point at which the official vote total swings from candidate A to candidate B. The question is whether you will cast that key vote. And the answer is that it’s extremely unlikely.

What does this mean? Well, first of all it means that you'd have to vote for a very long time – 230 million years – to swing one election and all you'd have to show for it is a Bush in the White House instead of a Kerry (or visa versa). If you are like me and many other voters, you can't get very excited about either Bush or Kerry, so your final payoff would be lackluster, at best. For those who still think these odds look acceptable, consider the following comparisons. You are 12 times as likely to die from a dog attack, 34,000 times as likely to die in a motor vehicle accident, and 274 times as likely to die in a bathtub drowning as you are to swing a presidential election.

My friend thinks that his Libertarian votes have been wasted and that his vote for a Democrat will matter. This analysis shows that his vote for Kerry has a vanishingly small expected value. Even if he would be willing to pay $10,000 to determine the winner in November, the expected value (probability times value) of his vote for Kerry is only $0.00017. Americans won't even stoop to pick up a penny on the ground yet every four years they happily cast votes worth one fiftieth as much. Voting may still make sense, but the overall satisfaction of participating in a great democracy must be compared to the time and costs of voting. The expected vote-swinging outcome is rounding error. In fact, if you drive to your polling place, you are approximately ten times more likely to die in an accident on the way than you are to swing that presidential election.

Now, what if my friend votes for Michael Badnarik, the 2004 Libertarian candidate? Is that vote wasted? Well, it is clear that no third-party candidate will win the 2004 election, but my friend's support would certainly help his favorite political party stay in business and therefore get noticed. While it is in business, his party will help define election issues and could even get lucky and elect a president. Abraham Lincoln and Jesse Ventura are good examples of third-party candidates who were elected. Ross Perot in 1996 and 1992, American Independent George Wallace in 1968, and Progressive Robert LaFollette in 1924 were presidential candidates who got a large percentage of the popular vote. More likely, as any third party becomes successful, the Democrats and Republicans will simply adopt that party's platforms. The same thing happened with the Socialist party early in the 20th century. As Milton Friedman points out, the Socialists failed miserably with a popular vote total that peaked at only six percent in 1912. But they succeeded in the way that matters most. Dig below the surface and you'll find that virtually every economic plank of the Socialist's 1928 platform has since been written into law. The votes cast for these Socialists certainly weren't wasted from the point of view of those who cast them.

Your one vote has the same power to affect the results whether you vote for a major or minor candidate, but a vote for the candidate you respect and agree with gives you the expectation of a better outcome. If you are like me and do take the time and effort to vote, you should put your X beside the candidate you think will be the best president, not the one most likely to beat the guy you dislike. The myth of the wasted third-party vote is just that – a myth. If there is a wasted vote, it is the one cast futilely against the candidate you dislike in an attempt to swing the national election."
Link

I will NEVER vote Democratic or Republican, unless the candidate actually holds libertarian ideals.

[Vex]

[ QUOTE ]
Their is a movement in this country to create an oppressive christian state...Vote democrat(lesser of two evils)

[/ QUOTE ]

I am more scared of the ideals of the far left than I am of the far right. They want to fling our borders open and let anyone at all enter the country and live off our dole. They want to make it a thought crime to speak out in any way that might be in the slightest bit offensive to anyone. They want to take away my hard-earned money. They want to take away availability of jobs for me and give them to others, not based on merit but based on breeding. They have the hubris to think that America is the cause of all the problems in the world from third-world starvation to Middle-Eastern terrorism to global warming, and because of that they want to take us all down a peg.

One thing to note about political extremism is that the end result is always just off center. The Libertarian platform may seem way too far out there for most people -- but so are those of the far Left and far Right. Don't be scared to vote Libertarian because of that -- there's no way their nearly anarchist ideals would ever come to pass. But votes for them will move this country in the direction of more personal freedoms for its citizens and less government drain on our finances. These are reasonable things.

Whatever you do, don't buy that "lesser of two evils" argument. That's just supporting the same broken two-party system that has gotten us in trouble so deep already.

[batts]

[ QUOTE ]
Im a libertarian now.

[/ QUOTE ]

[mport1]

By the way, I so no way how this legislation can be rationalized constitutionally. Hopefully somebody will challenge it in court. I can't imagine this holding up for long, but you never know (look at the war on marijuana).

[mport1]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't be scared to vote Libertarian because of that -- there's no way their nearly anarchist ideals would ever come to pass.

[/ QUOTE ]

We are nowhere near anarchist. That is a common misconception that people have about us.

[5thStreetHog]

[ QUOTE ]



I am more scared of the ideals of the far left than I am of the far right. They want to fling our borders open and let anyone at all enter the country and live off our dole. They want to make it a thought crime to speak out in any way that might be in the slightest bit offensive to anyone. They want to take away my hard-earned money. They want to take away availability of jobs for me and give them to others, not based on merit but based on breeding. They have the hubris to think that America is the cause of all the problems in the world from third-world starvation to Middle-Eastern terrorism to global warming, and because of that they want to take us all down a peg.



[/ QUOTE ] I really take issue with alot of these statements.But,fair enough,i stated my opinion and you stated yours.I do however think that BK and M had much more compelling arguements to my statement in posts they made than yours.I have a feeling we would not agree on alot of things lol.But i respect your opinion.