[lotso]

If you really care about improving the viability of third parties in this country, please do that in local and state elections where it is actually possible to elect third parties.

Voting for 3rd parties in Presidential elections is fine, but really doesn't do much really and if you actually dig deep into 3rd party Presidential candidates, they're usually not great either.

[dnautics]

This is an incredibly concern trolling argument. There is no right or wrong way to vote for third parties.

[mc32]

I initially was upset at mr Nader, when Gore lost. I got over it and, in retrospect, the blame is fully on Gore. He simply didn't convince enough people with his message. It wasn't Nader's (or anyone else's) responsibility to make Gore more electable, it was Gore's responsibility.

[the_watcher]

Extremely well said. The point of multiple candidates is to offer voters a choice, and it's the job of a candidate to convince voters to choose him or her. Just because a candidate won a primary in a major party does not entitle the candidate to votes from people who find another candidate more appealing. If you want to vote strategically, fine. You have that option. If you like one candidate best, but the major party candidate is close enough that you're willing to vote for them in the interest of protecting against another outcome, that's also fine. But to the people arguing that voting third party is throwing your vote away: this is the argument that is used to convince otherwise reasonable Republicans to vote for Trump.

[lotso]

>There is no right or wrong way to vote for third parties.

Sure, I agree with you.

However, if your goal is to make third parties viable long-term in Presidential elections and not dependent on having very unfavorable candidates from the major 2 parties, I would argue that strong local and state 3rd parties are important.