If you want to vote for minority parties, by all means do so, but first you should either reform the U.S. election system to accommodate third parties or you should take up citizenship in some foreign country.
Good old Joe Green showed up at Baileys, sauntered up to the table and threw a C-note on the table to exchange for a small pile of blue chips. Joe peeked at the first card the dealer put in front of him - a king of diamonds. Good start, Joe thought to himself. On the second round of cards, Joe saw he had be dealt the queen of diamonds and on the third the ace.
With spirits high, Joe slapped three of his $10 chips on the table, urged the dealer to continue dealing and subsequently raised that with two more. By the time he had been dealt five cards and he saw a royal flush in his hand he had bet not only the full $100 that he started with but had put another $5000 on his credit card. His excitement was at a peak when the cards were called and the dealer raked in all of his chips. When Joe protested, the dealer said: this is a blackjack table; don't you know the rules? Joe protested that he preferred the rules of draw poker and casino security dragged him kicking and screaming out of the Reno casino.
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Joe Green also plans to vote for the Green party Senate and House candidates in this November's election and he is making the same mistake he made at the blackjack table. He is confused about what game he is playing.
U.S. election rules to not accommodate third party candidates. That little dot is a period (just in case you missed it).
Those who vote for third party candidates are just like poker players who are playing by draw-poker rules at a black-jack table. They will lose. Unfortunately the stakes are higher than in Reno and the rest of the country will loose as well.
You cannot just look at other countries where voting for third party candidates is sensible and conclude that doing so is sensible in America. The election rules in other countries are not the same as here. Other countries have parliamentary systems or they have proportional representation in their legislatures or they have instant runoff voting. The U.S. electoral system has none of these more modern systems but is stuck with and electoral system that truly was the state of the art in 1776.
If you want to vote for minority parties, by all means do so, but first you should either reform the U.S. election system to accommodate third parties or you should take up citizenship in some foreign country that is playing by the rules that you prefer. To do otherwise is to ensure that we all lose.