Redundant Votes are Wasted Votes.

Why voting D or R is the real waste.

The amount of times I’ve heard “a third party vote is a wasted vote” makes me want to pull my hair out, because it couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, in most cases, the mainstream party vote is the wasted one.

Let’s conjure up an election with 10000 voters. Candidate R gets 5000 votes, candidate D gets 3000 votes, and candidate L gets 2000 votes.

Which votes are wasted? If you’re the traditional public you say the wasted votes are the ones for candidate L, and maybe the ones for candidate D. But this is because we’re all too quick to confuse “wasted” with “losing”. What is a wasted vote? Well, it’s a vote that, if not cast, wouldn’t effect the election.

What we forget is that 1999 of the votes for Candidate R are also wasted. If 1999 less people voted for candidate R, they would have still won. I’m not going to bring in anything about alternative voting systems, just talking voting strategy here.

Let’s say backers of R are composed of people who really don’t like R, but they think he has a “chance of winning”. These backers of R really would prefer L.

Say we transfer just the 1999 wasted votes for R to L (still ensuring the win). The results:

R: 3001
D: 3000
L: 3999

Wait, what? Yes, you read that correctly. Now candidate L takes the win, with only the votes wasted on the mainstream candidate. These 1999 voters originally wasted their vote, but since they voted their conscience this time around, they made their vote count.

Obviously this doesn’t apply everywhere. But if you’re in a state with a clear history of swinging red or blue, remember:

A redundant vote for a democrat or republican is a wasted vote.