Judy Baar Topinka, Republican nominee for Illinois Governor, said on November 2, “If people want to have a change, they won’t waste their vote any other way”. News media interpreted her remark as a plea to voters not to vote for the Green Party, which is the only party on the ballot in Illinois statewide races besides the Democratic and Republican Parties. A new Mason-Dixon Poll released that day showed: Democrat Rod Blagojevich 44%, Republican Topinka 40%, Green Whitney 7%, undecided 9%.
No greater waste of your money and time than a vote for the main parties.
First of all, I absolutely concure with the first comment.
Obdviously, Topikna was not referring to the Green Party candidate, but to her alarm at the uknexpectedly strong write-in race of Constitution Party candidate Randy Stufflebeam. He has received some organizational endorsements, some friendly media coverage and has been able to run at least two different radio ads. It is hard to tell how his campaign will translate into people actually making the effort to write his name in, but he has done a remarkable job as a write-in candidate. It is clearly his candidacy she is nervous about, not the Green candidate, whose race probably stands to help her. Why do you think Rick Santorum’s people gave the Greens $100,000 to try to get on the ballot in Pennsylvania?
I’ve heard of some dirty underhanded tactics; but, paying a minor party money so a major party can win. Now that’s corruption.
If she WAS referring to the Green, I just don’t understand why she would go out of her way to help the incumbent like that. I would guess Blagojevich would lose protest votes to the Green far more than she would. I can’t believe she would be concerned about a write-in from any minor party.
Compare the results of this poll to other recent polls. A big chunk of disenchanted voters are clearly still making their mind up between minor-party candidate Whitney and non-incumbent major-party candidate Topinka without reference to the traditional left-right axis.
As for the Romanelli affair in PA, I would caution against making one of the fundamental mistaken assumptions of popular (and, alas, much academic) discourse about political economy: that rich people are better than the rest of us at predicting the future. Just because some rich people thought Romanelli would throw the election to Santorum does not mean they’re more correct than the many non-rich people who don’t think that’s an accurate assessment.
These are some thoughtful comments.
It’s interesting how traditional-thinking politicians and voters always throw around the “don’t waste your vote” nonsense, without stopping to think about what they’re really saying. In our winner-take-all system, any vote for someone who doesn’t win is wasted, whether the loser gets 1% or 49%.
What they really mean is that a vote that isn’t cast for a major party candidate is wasted, because these same people have no reservations about hustling to the polls to cast votes for doomed losers such as McGovern in ’72 or Mondale in ’84. Isn’t a vote for a Republican presidential candidate in the District of Columbia wasted? Or a Democratic presidential candidate in Wyoming? But no one ever says that it is.
If anything, the vote in such cases for the third party candidate is far more significant, since a higher-than-expected total for those candidates usually puts pressure on those who are elected, gives the party some political leverage, and helps establish the party’s foothold for future elections. I doubt we’d have had a New Deal without Eugene Debs and his 3% in 1920 and Norman Thomas’ 900,000 votes in 1932.
So a vote for George McGovern in Alabama in 1972 wasn’t wasted, but a vote for Norman Thomas in New York in 1932 was?
You make the call.
I think it’s pretty clear she was talking about Whitney.
That said, does a Republican seriously think that people voting for a Green would vote for a Republican as their second choice?
I would agree that the way it reads seems as if she is refering to the Green candidate, but as the last paragraph suggests, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Oh well, if Dem and GOP politicians had any sense we wouldn’t be in this horrible mess we’re in. A vote for any third party is better than voting for a Dem or a GOP. If only we could eliminate the Dems and GOPs and let the voters be confronted with intelligent debate between the Libertarian, Constitution and Green party candidates…We would be so much better off!
Let them sweat out ballot access for awhile.
This is probably one of the best comment sections on this board in awhile. I have a website that contains a position paper on Why Vote Third Party. (www.nysthirdparty.com) You’ll find it in the Position Papers section of the site. I won’t rehash it here except to say that other than wasting your vote by voting for a Dem or Rep, the only true waste is not voting at all. If you don’t vote, the politicians don’t care about you because they don’t have to spend their time or money convincing you to vote for them. But if you vote third party, they have to pay attention to you because your third party candidate now represents competition.
Lastly, it seems to me Topikna is talking about the Constitution candidate. It seems obvious that the Green voters would be to liberal to vote for a Republican. But even if she meant the Green candidate voters, she makes the mistake of thinking that all of the third party voters will switch their votes if there were no third party candidates. Most likely, the majority would either drop out or do write in votes.
Sounds like Topinka is afraid that, if the race is close enough, the write-ins for the Constitution Party candidate could deprive her of victory.
As for “dirty underhanded tactics,” helping someone get on the ballot who will drain votes from one’s main competitor– that’s pretty far down the list.
And let’s remember that, because of the Electoral College, our presidential votes only count in our home states. If one’s state is reliably red or blue, he is, in my view, freer to vote for a third-party candidate.
Since the Green Party siphons votes mainly from the Democrats, I hope the Greens prosper everywhere.
Topinka is not talking about Stufflebeam.
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/politics/15932040.htm
Please accept for once and for all that the impact of the Green candidate on the race _cannot_ be measured by adding the Green vote total or polling numbers to those of the Democrat.