Michael,
All too true. The "wasted vote syndrome" continues to be the biggest thing holding the Libertarian Party back. Voting for the candidate who most closely reflects our ideas (as Bruce said) is the way to go. It doesn't matter whether that candidate has a chance of winning or not. Again, it does NOT MATTER if the candidates we vote for have a serious chance of winning! This cannot be stressed too much, because once people understand it, a major objection to voting Libertarian melts away.
Why doesn't it matter? Because one vote will not change the results of any significant election. If it's that close, there will almost certainly be a recount, and the recount total is almost always different. Even if you could convince 10, 100, or even 1,000 of your friends to change their votes and vote the way you want them to, you will probably never affect the outcome of any state or national election. Even local elections are very, very rarely decided by a difference small enough for an ordinary person to conceivably affect. Eileen Hansen's loss to Mark Leno for San Francisco Supervisor in 2000 by 712 votes was seen as so close that she bragged about it in 2002 as a way of selling her electability.
So if your vote won't change the outcome, why vote? Because it makes a difference in other ways. It will cause people to take notice. Voting regularly gets you included in the list of people who are more frequently surveyed and whose views are more closely examined by political observers. Vote totals, as Steve mentioned. Higher totals give a party or a candidate more credibility. Beating expectations. If a candidate expected to get no more than 9% gets 10%, that is a victory. Sometimes a losing candidate who beats expectations is perceived as more of a winer than than a winning candidate who squeaks by with an unexpectedly small margin of victory.
When we vote, we express confidence not only in the candidate we vote for, but in that candidate's party. If we vote for a Republican or a Democrat, we are expressing confidence in those parties. If we vote for a popular Republican or a Democrat, we express confidence in the choices presented to us by the mainstream media — the parties and candidates they tell us we should be paying attention to and choosing among.
Voting for a non-Libertarian candidate when there is a Libertarian in the race who stands for our party and its ideas is sending a vote of no confidence in the Libertarian Party. It undermines our solidarity and makes our work as activists more difficult. An LP activist who votes Republican or Democrat is sh--ting on his or her own activism. Let's respect ourselves and keep the faith — vote straight-ticket Libertarian every time!
Yours in liberty,
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