Does Obama deserve to be re-elected?

[Mr Khan]

insomniac17 said:

Mr Khan said:

under the American system, it is throwing away your vote. If there are 5 candidates, with one getting 23%, three getting 20%, and one getting 17%, Mr. 23 gets all the marbles, and the votes of 77% of the population are rendered utterly meaningless. So it is natural that we try to accumulate as broad of political parties as possible, leading to our milquetoast Right-wing and Left-wing parties, because you need a candidate with as broad appeal as possible, for fear that the other guy is slightly more popular.

You could argue that any time you vote for the loser, you're throwing away your vote (like in the last election when it was pretty apparent McCain would lose). Chances are, the election won't be decided by one vote anyway, so you don't even really need to vote. You're not going to have much of an impact on the election. Yes, if everyone felt that way, no one would vote and the system would break down. But how many national elections are decided by one vote? Even Florida in 2000 had a difference of over 500 votes.

As I said before, I believe that voting for the candidate I think will do the best job is not throwing my vote away, and to do otherwise is implicitly agreeing with something that I don't actually agree with. I don't expect Johnson to win, but I do want his platform to be heard by more people.

In a way that proves my point. If the Nader folks had swallowed their pride and voted for Gore, he would have easily won Florida, and US history would have been changed for so much better. I believe McCain lost both North Carolina and Indiana in 2008 by smaller margins than those who voted for Bob Barr, and so the libertarians could have averted (or tried to avert) what (for them) is the Obama disaster. And then, of course, there's Ross Perot and George Bush in 1992.