Wow, never have I been so glad that someone forgot to register to vote.
Yeah, because it hurts Obama when someone who never intended to vote for Obama votes for a third party candidate -- one of the guys who can't 5 percent on a good year -- instead of McCain?
This binary logic is not compatible outside the plastic shell of a Texas Instruments calculator.
Voting is additive, not subtractive. You make it sound like there is a big tub of bubble gum and everyone gets to pull one out a piece until there is none left.
That's not quite right. If there is a tub, then no one can guess how much bubble gum is in it. Being a registered voter is not the same as being a voter.
A better analogy would be that each candidate is a tub, and people come up to throw in a piece. At the end of the day, the tub with the most gum wins. To say throwing your gum in one tub specifically cripples the tub next to it is stupid, and shows you are ignoring the three or more other tubs next to it.
Your view is the one that keeps the absolutely fucked two-party system in power. Who dares to vote for another party when any vote outside the two accepted ones is declared to be "throwing away your vote"?
Democracy does not function when there are only two tubs of bubble gum. It makes it impossible for other candidates to put their tubs up there on election day unless they become best friends with the boys who control the
only two tubs.
That is nothing but a race to the bottom and it guarantees scandalous corruption of both parties. And once the men who control the tubs become friends with each other, then you really just have one tub. That means you have one real party hiding behind an illusion of choice -- not terribly different from here.
Voters should vote for whomever they find themselves most in agreement with, or choose not to vote at all. You should be able to stand by your choice and not regret it. If you say, "I just voted for him to keep the other guy from winning," then you kind of missed the point. Only in a system where everyone votes for whoever they most agree with will election results represent the view of the majority.
Boy oh boy! I can't wait for America to finish teaching the rest of the world about democracy!