Mistakes Americans Make Concerning Voting
Even some very accomplished Americans don't know enough about voting to protect themselves or the rest of us. Take, for example, the 2000 Presidential election. In this close race, the national race winner had to win the Florida electoral vote. The Republicans won Florida by only 537 votes. Yet, the Green Party received nearly 3 million votes. Both the Green Party and the Democrats were more supportive of protecting the environment and decreasing the influence of large corporations than the Republicans. Likely, more than 537 Greens would have voted for the Democrats rather than the Republicans if the Green Party had withdrawn from the race before the election began. Because it is such a small party, the loss of the election by the Green Party was guaranteed before election day. Thus, if Nader was thinking at all, he should have known that he had only two alternatives. One was to stay in the race to get a few more useless votes and perhaps contribute to the election of his worst choice. The other alternative was to protect his values by dropping out and hoping the Democrats would win. In this second alternative, he had an excellent chance to advance, even though only slightly, his goals of environmental protection and countering corporate power. He was way ahead of his time in many ways but utterly incompetent in politics, which led to at least an 8-year pause in meeting his goals.
The American voting system declares the person with the most votes to be the winner. This is the winner-take-all American political system in which, logically, there are usually only two alternatives. Thus, in such a system, there will usually be only two parties at most that can win.
The following common mistakes would cause the voter to waste their vote.
Voting for a third party unless it has a realistic chance of winning. To this day, Ralph Nader denies that voting for his party contributed to George Bush's becoming president. Yet, it's highly likely that he inadvertently contributed to the Republican victory. Unfortunately, The Green Party in 2024 will again likely draw votes from the Democrats. If that leads to a Trump win, the Green Party would be complicit in electing the worst party for the environment. Even though the Greens have won some local races around the country, they are so small that they are very likely to work against their interests in a Presidential race. At the national level, the best Greens can do is vote for the Democrats while pressuring them to embrace more of the Green Party agenda. I have used the Green Party as an example of the problems a third party can cause. Nevertheless, there are other examples of third parties in nearly every Presidential election.
Refusing to vote becomes the equivalent of voting for the person closest to the position you don't want. If you decide you will not vote for anyone, this might be because you do not like any of the candidates or because you became angry with your favorite candidate. The possibility of not voting for anyone for the 2024 election has been stated by many African Americans and for different reasons by many Arab Americans upset with Biden's performance in the Israeli-Hamas War. Refusing to vote out of anger is foolish. This act increases the chance that the person or party you don’t want to win might win. Given that the MAGA party is a white supremacist party, neither blacks nor any non-whites nor anyone holding a religion other than Christian Nationalism should withhold their vote for Biden.
Voting for a person if that person’s party will work against your interests. A candidate may have the demeanor you think is ideal but who, because of pressures from that person’s party, will not do anything to help you. For example, suppose you like Donald Trump's way of challenging those who oppose him, but you are not extremely wealthy. You should recognize that the Republican Party has long been influenced by the extremely rich. A vote for Trump would entail even more economic problems for the average person than a vote for Biden, who does not support as many things that favor the extremely wealthy.
Most Americans do not know all three of these mistakes that accompany a winner-take-all voting system, and many do not know any of them. Such knowledge is simple to learn, and even though secondary education in the U.S. is tasked with teaching many things besides traditional academic subjects, it would not take much additional time to teach these potential mistakes as well. Ignorance of how one's voting system works is a significant flaw in a state struggling to be a democracy.