<expletive deleted>-A right.
<expletive deleted>-A
wrong.
Voting your conscience is great as long as your candidate stands a reasonable chance of being elected. If you vote your conscience knowing full well that your candidate has about as much chance of being elected as Mickey Mouse, then you are throwing away your vote. More problematic is that you are potentially handing the victory to the least desirable candidate because your "conscience" vote drew a vote away from a candidate that had a chance at winning.
Think Ross Perot.
And before anyone gets all high and mighty, stick it. Your ego and conscience don't trump my pen and calculator. I can figure what the probabilities are and know which candidates have a likely chance at winning. I will NOT throw my vote away on someone I prefer, but that has a only a four or five percent voter following. With great power (the vote) comes great responsibility (using it wisely). Throwing away my vote in a fit of righteous indignation is about as responsible as checking a gas tank with a lit match. And just about as effective.
You may not like admitting to reality but the rest of us know that we're stuck with it. We know to use our vote as effectively as possible, not waste it just so we can point our noses in the air and proclaim how "pure" our votes were. Well, guess what Skippy. Your "conscientious" vote may well have cost the better candidate the election.
*Edit To Add* The only way to get a truly objective vote in a 2+ party system is to have a multiple vote or by-order vote with all candidates equally weighted. In the multiple vote system there would be one vote with all candidates present. Take the majority winners (top five of eight, top four of six, top three of four, etc) and vote again. Keep doing so until you end up with two candidates, then hold the final election. In the by order vote system you would have a ballot where you list your choices by order, first choice, second, third, etc., even having the ability to NOT rank a person who you vehemently disliked as a candidate. It would then be a matter of statistical analysis to begin filtering votes in levels - majority of initial candidates, majority of majority, majority if that majority, and so on until you have one person at the top of the pile.
In either case everyone has equal chance of getting "their" candidate in the running and not get into the draw-away vote fiasco like we had with Ross Perot. The system would be a pain in the butt, but it would be truly fair and even handed.
Brad
