Perhaps the question
Libertarians hear most is "Why
Waste Your Vote?"
The answer of
course is that you shouldn't waste your vote, and
the Libertarian Party is not asking you to.
Many
people think that voting for a political candidate who is unlikely to
win the election is wasting one's vote. They seem to see an election
as a sort of horse-race, and a vote as a kind of bet. They seem to
expect a payoff for backing the winner.
But there is
no payoff in voting to elect an officeholder
who is opposed
to the ideas of individual liberty that you
believe in –
even if he/she is marginally better than the
other candidate.
In fact, there
is a negative payoff: The major parties will
see that vote
as a declaration of support for their cynical candidate's
cynical positions. The message they'll get from your vote
is "Just keep on doing what you're doing
and I'll support
you".
Allowing yourself
to be stampeded by fear of one major party's
authoritarian
candidate into voting for the other major party
authoritarian
candidate is in fact wasting your
vote - wasting
your one chance to say for the US Government
and the public
to hear: "This is
what I believe
in; this is what I stand for; this is the
direction I want
the country to go."
A vote for a
third party, on the other hand, is a
constructive use
of your vote. In most elections, your vote will not swing
the election from one major party's candidate to another
– it will be swamped in the hundreds of thousands or
millions of others for that candidate. But your vote is
much more significant in the smaller vote count
of a minor
party – a steadily increasing vote total for a minor
party tells the major parties, 'Here
is something a significant number of people
want. You need
to tailor your policies to try to include
them.'
In
the long run,
a large and increasing Libertarian vote total,
even if every
Libertarian candidate loses, will change this country's
politics more in the direction of individual liberty than
decades of liberty-loving people frittering
away their votes
on one electoral thug after another who just happens to
be not so appalling as the other party's thug
this year.
THE
2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
The 2004 Presidential
election offered Texas Libertarians an unmatched opportunity not to
waste their votes. The major parties' candidates were stunningly
unattractive; no matter whom any Texan voted for, Bush was going to
take Texas in 2004. So a vote for Kerry or Bush in a Texas voting
booth was an utterly wasted vote (unless you really believed he was
the right guy).
Yet many liberty-loving voters are so unnerved by the
prospect of Bush's re-election that they let themselves be stampeded
into voting for Kerry, or vice-versa, depending on which particular
issues they value most. They missed their chance to show by their votes what they
really want for the country. They truly wasted their votes.
Mr. Bush is now claiming he has a "mandate"
because a majority of the country's voters "supported" him.
Had all the libertarians voted "Libertarian,"
whoever won would have been a minority president, and entered
office knowing that a majority of the country opposed him.
That's a message politicians need to hear. Don't be
afraid to send it to them. This year, instead of voting your fears,
vote your conscience, your
dreams
and your hopes.
Don't pass up the chance. Don't waste your vote.
Vote Libertarian.
