UNofficial Political Poll...

[kring]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
I vote for the candidate I think is best or who I want to win. Always have and always will. I am proud to say I can't tell the difference between any parties named DIA, Hawks, UFC, NWO or HLA, or even which of these still exist, if they ever did.

Thus I am a number 4. It is as if I am blind to party affiliations.

I couldn't agree more with this sentiment. It is better to vote for the person instead of the party; that is a lot of what is wrong IRL because people vote party instead of person.

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by kring

that is a lot of what is wrong IRL because people vote party instead of person.

I disagree, since the main reason why it's dumb when people vote party is when either:

a) the person running from their party is a complete incompetent fool and only party voters are bothering to vote for the idiot

b) the differences between the parties are meaningless to the issues that matter in a particular election, but the voter is too lazy to inform themselves about the issues that do matter for that election and ends up just voting for the candidate(s) of their party

...

HOWEVER, parties are very useful for people of like mind and principle to organize together in order to make running elections easier and more organized. It is also useful to the voter who does not necessarily know all of the candidates terribly well, but can use the party label as a guide in cases where the party label is meaningful.

Despite the fact that the American party system has only 2 electorally effective parties and most European states have half a dozen to dozens of electorally effective parties is really no more than two variations on the same system. All the American parties are (in reality) is confederations of factions, factions that would have their own parties in most European countries. I like the European system better because each individual faction gets its own party with a label the voters can use to easily differntiate them from other factions... the key problem with the American system is that all factions are grouped into two super-parties with the same label... so the labels quickly become meaningless... which is why far more of us in the U.S. and other two-party systems are tempted to hate parties and vote person before party.

Personally, I vote person before party myself. I'm a Republican who has voted for more Democrats than Republicans in several elections for the simple reason that some of the people in charge of my party are complete and utter idiots . I mean... we're talking about a party that's put up Oliver North (a man who purposely violated the U.S. Constitution while working for President Reagan and lied to Congress in order to cover it up...) for Senate and a guy who was against public education for Lieutenant Governor in my state... I just recently voted for the Democratic candidate for Governnor in my state because the Republican candidate had the gall (gotta admit his courage, though...) to oppose even the holding of a referendum on taxes. So there are times I just wonder if the party leadership went brain-dead . But, generally, the party label can be pretty useful.

EDIT: Arnelos wonders whether Reddawg, who also lives in Virginia (though he goes to school at UVA, not necessarily a Virginia native like myself), will want to comment on my statements about Virginia politics