When you go to vote-

[captiousduality]

Please don't select Republican for all or Democrat for all! Be honest. Unless you are a hardcore politics geek there are state offices that you do not care about at all. You don't even really know who the person running from your party is. This is your opportunity to do a good deed! 3rd parties have to petition and push to get their candidates on

Comments

[dru_plus_spike]

That's what I usually do, I'm glad I'm not the only one.

[captiousduality]

THANK YOU!

[jarredeyes]

So wait...

Are you saying to vote for third party candidates if we also do not know who they are if we do not know who our party's candidate is? Generally I skip them altogether if I don't know them or if there is only one candidate listed and I don't like that candidate.

Funny thing...for some reason when I voted for the first time ever, I thought I had to vote for EVERY office so I did. I felt like a complete moron after. My dad found out and went off on me.

Side note: I think I might actually be doing a write in for the first time in my voting career - for state's attorney of my county. :D

[captiousduality]

I'm saying in any instance where you'd skip vote 3rd party instead. It won't change the outcome of the election but it could keep the 3rd party on the ballot.

[jarredeyes]

So on my ballot, there was only ONE office (besides president and OBVIOUSLY I was not going to vote third party on THAT) that had a third party and it was for the Green Party. I didn't vote for the Green Party guy because I was already voting for someone else.

There were several unopposed races. I didn't vote in most of them.

[captiousduality]

Yeah, IL has SUPER restrictive ballots. The # of signatures required and time you have to get them is INSANE.

[teflonspyder]

Being informed is fine too. :) I'd personally advocate people gathering information on the candidates running for every position they cast a vote for, but I'm a sadist like that. Even if the third party candidates running for position x are for whatever individual reason more deserving than their opponents, you need to know. If you can't determine based on their positions which of the myriad of candidates running you'd prefer to see in office, don't vote. The way to support a third party candidate is to spend your time increasing their visibility and spreading whatever message they've got that resonates with you.
Caveat: If you feel that a given position's influence or responsibilities are less important than pushing to get more options on the table a few years down the line then filling in the gaps with third party candidates is fine. :) Or one of the big two, even, if you're really that agreeable with their ideology and don't mind that said ideology will probably change over the next couple of decades.

[captiousduality]

The only visibility that counts is on the ballot. You can paper the whole city in 3rd party posters/flyers/etc everyone can be entirely aware they exist. But that doesn't mean anything at all. I don't give a flying fuck if people know who they are. I am not trying to convince other people to vote for them. I am trying to make it so that people who don't want to vote for a Rep or a Dem can be like hmmm I'll vote this dude instead. So that there is something else there. Realistically this is not the answer. Ballot access is bullshit. There shouldn't be percentages to win and petitioning they should be required to list all candidates on the ballot. But that's not how it is. So ballot access matters. I mean you say gather the information on everyone running but no one does that. The same person is going to win the state office whether you abstain from voting or vote 3rd party so why not vote 3rd party?

[sacredpsycho]

Okee dokey.