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Politics Government

Cornell Hosts Third-Party Presidential Debates 126

Posted by timothy from the thanks-a-lot-cpd dept.
clonebarkins writes "Tonight at 8:00, Cornell is hosting the third party presidential debate. Candidates debating are Michael Badnarik (Libertarian Party), Walt Brown (Socialist Party), David Cobb (Green Party), and Michael Peroutka (Constitution Party). Unfortunately, I cannot find any information about whether or not it will be broadcast anywhere."
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Cornell Hosts Third-Party Presidential Debates More

Cornell Hosts Third-Party Presidential Debates

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  • Not broadcast, (Score:5, Informative)

    by isotope23 ( 210590 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:07AM (#10450600) Homepage Journal
    But C-Span is supposed to rebroadcast it at a later time according to badnarik's site

  • isnt Cornell an Internet-savvy place? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:21AM (#10450787)
    They could broadcast it on the web, or at least record it, and bittorrent the video.
  • It appears that the Badnarik site [badnarik.org] is being /.'d please view the cornel site [cornell.edu] for more information on the debate until the bandwidth usage subsides.

  • Party Platforms (Score:4, Informative)

    by N3WBI3 ( 595976 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:59AM (#10451259) Homepage
    Constitution [constitutionparty.com]
    Libertarian [lp.org]
    Green [gp.org]
    Socalist [sp-usa.org]
    • Socalist [sp-usa.org]
      Damn Southern Californians, they've gone and formed their own political party?!

  • Wasted votes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @11:03AM (#10451321) Homepage Journal
    Now that I've trolled for your attention, I want to say that there's no such thing as a wasted vote.

    The election process is about more than just who wins. Sure, the winner is important, but there are other factors that have an impact on the behavior of government. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that one of the two major parties will win in November. Why vote for someone else?

    A vote is a statement of your general favor for a given candidate. It's a winner-take-all proposition; you don't get to divide it among three candidates you like. It's assumed that you don't believe the candidate is perfect for you; he was just good enough to get your vote.

    Voting for a third party or write-in candidate sends the signal that A) you care enough to vote and B) neither of the two major party clowns was good enough for you. To the extent that your vote matters at all, you have used it to tell the major parties that if their policies were more like the one for whom you voted, they might get your vote.

    A vote for a third party encourages that party, and also the other minor parties. They see the number of people who voted for them, and know where their support is.

    A vote for a third party lends them authority when they speak out. A press release from a party that got .01% of the vote is treated differently from a party that got 1.01%. If a party gets even 2% of the vote, they start to look mainstream. After all, getting 2% might be enough to alter the balance of power between the two major parties.

    But, it might be argued, doesn't that split the support for one of the major parties, causing the Most Evil Party to win instead of the Not Quite So Evil Party? Possibly, and that is part of the choice. Unless your tiny party is at one extreme of the spectrum occupied by the two majors, support for it will come proportionately from both of them.

    Most people want to vote for a winner. To vote for a third party you have to get past that sense of wanting to be on the winning side and remember to vote your own mind. If you only vote for the candidate you think is going to win, you have effectively allowed someone else to vote for you.

    Finally, voting for a third party encourages those who don't want to "waste" their vote that it's not such a waste. Voting is a herd phenomenon. When others see your party's vote total rising from past elections, they'll be more likely to vote that way themselves.

    • Re:Wasted votes (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think Badnarik sums it up best:

      "If you were in prison and you had a 50% choice of lethal injection, a 45% chance of going to the electric chair and only a 5% chance of escape, are you likely to vote for lethal injection because that is your most likely outcome?" --Michael Badnarik

      • Re:Wasted votes (Score:2, Insightful)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )
        I think you misunderstood the quote.

        The idea is, no matter what you do, there is a 50% chance of lethal injection, 45% chance of electric chair, and 5% chance of escape.

        The question is, you are given a chance to vote on your "favorite". This will have no effect on what happens, it is not a vote on what will be done. He is claiming that people in the current election will vote for lethal injection since it is the most likely outcome and people like to vote for the "winner". The idea is that you really shou
        • The problem is that (a) Bush and Kerry may be further from your ideal than you like, but comparing them to lethal injection and the electric chair is just silly. (b) Badnarik isn't going to win. No percentage. Especially not in this election. Even if 1% of voters vote for him, he doesn't have a "1% chance of winning" -- the President is not chosen by choosing a random ballot and using that ballot. The President will either be Kerry or Bush, unless one gets killed before the election.

          Badnarik has exact
          • Approval voting. IRV just delays the spoiler, but it's still got it. Also, it's got even nastier problems than plurality.

            Approval works much like plurality, with one change (that makes it much better) - you can approve of (vote for) as many candidates as you want. Don't like any of them? Don't vote for any of them - it counts as one person voting for nobody (a blank ballot currently counts as an error). Love all of them? Go for it - it counts as one person voting for a bunch of candidates.

    • Re:Wasted votes (Score:2, Insightful)

      by CodeWanker ( 534624 )
      Third parties serve as a laboratory for ideas. It is up to the voter to lobby his representatives to co-opt these ideas for the major party of the voter's choice. You can lobby by writing to your representatives, and you can do it by voting for third parties.
      • Writing to your representatives (Senate and House) has nothing to do with the presidential election. You can ask that your representatives do anything that you want. The party of the President is entirely irrelevant to that. You need not waste your Presidential vote on a third party to do so.

    • Re:Wasted votes (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This year, you have a choice:
      1. vote for bush
      2. vote for kerry
      3. vote for a "3rd party"

      However, it turns out that in *this* election, #1 and #3 are equivalent: If you don't vote for kerry, you're voting for bush. Think about that. If you decide to "make a statement" this year, your statement will be interpreted as "please let bush continue to piss off the rest of the world." If that's the kind of statement you want to make, by all means feel free (after all, it is your right).

      Listening to chene

      • Re:Wasted votes (Score:3, Informative)

        by Brandybuck ( 704397 )
        Translation: Don't vote for someone, vote against someone. Subordinate your beliefs to the expedient. Let me tell you how to vote.
        • The original poster is doing the same thing.

          Slashdot, as well as most Internet forums, is predominantly liberal.

          If the poster can convince a number of people to vote third party, he will tend to hurt the Democrats more than the Republicans, and hence strengthen the Republican party in this election.
          • If the poster can convince a number of people to vote third party, he will tend to hurt the Democrats more than the Republicans

            A third party vote in any election, in any year, in the two-party US system, will always help one of the two major parties more than the other. Next election it might help the Dems. The one after that the Reps.

            In EVERY election there will always be one major candidate you dislike more than the other. ALWAYS. By your logic no one should ever vote for a third party. That's stupid.

      • Re:Wasted votes (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Inebrius ( 715009 )
        "If you don't vote for kerry, you're voting for bush"

        This is complete BS. First off, you are assuming that someone would otherwise vote for Kerry. Second, you are assuming that those who vote for a third party actually could swing the election for Kerry away from Bush.

        I live in California. Kerry wins California, by a considerable margin. I'm calling it now. California, along with many other states, are not contested.

        Since there is 1 realistic outcome for California, people in California, whether tra
        • And THIS is why the Electoral College should be abolished. Candidates shouldn't be winning states, they should be winning people. We have television, radio, and the Internet - forms of communication that are widely accessible. The EC was created so that farmers that didn't have access to the kind of information that we do today on candidates didn't throw elections. We don't have that problem any more.

    • Re:Wasted votes (Score:3, Informative)

      by cavehobbit ( 652751 )
      Vote for what you want, not for what you fear.

      Voting for what you want, sends the system a message that a change is needed. When enough of these are sent, change happens or an old party is replaced.
      See the history of the Whig party vs. the Republican Party in the 1800's. The Whigs were replaced by the Republicans.

      See the history of the Socialst vs. the Dems in the 1910's-40's. The Socialists got people elected, even some to Congress, The Dem's responded, absorbed some of the Socialits positions, and the S
    • Now that I've trolled for your attention, I want to say that there's no such thing as a wasted vote.

      I disagree.

      The election process is about more than just who wins.

      No, the lobbying, polling, debate, and forum process is about expressing wants. The election process is simply there to choose a president. During polling and so forth, you get to say "I want someone who pushes anti-abortion more strongly than Bush does".

      A vote is a statement of your general favor for a given candidate. It's a winner-t

    • Patience. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Confessed Geek ( 514779 )

      To continue to preserve democracy in the United States, we MUST have at least a 3rd, and hopefully a 4th, 5th, 6th, Xth, party.

      HOWEVER, voting for a 3rd party presidential canidate IS a wasted vote and considering how bad the current state of affairs today, IMNSH opinion irresponsible.

      There are a lot more offices up for election on Nov 2nd than just the president. If you really want to get 3rd parties in the running vote for the lesser evil for the national offices, but start voting in 3rd party canidat

      • Re:Patience. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Bryan Ischo ( 893 ) *
        Hey man, I'm a card-carrying member of the Libertarian party and I am going to vote for the Libertarian in every election that I can. I don't care if you think it's a wasted vote. You can come up with all of the illogical half-truths that you want to to try to justify your opinion that others should only vote the way you want them to, I don't care, I'm still going to vote Libertarian. I happen to believe that the founders of our country wanted us to vote for who WE wanted to win, not who we think EVERYON
      • If politics was an industry, the justice department would be sueing both the dems and the repubs for antitrust violations.

        Keep voting for your favorite third party, work at the state level to change the way it allocates electoral votes, work to eliminate signature requirements for established third parties. If you and others like you keep at it, others will notice and join, it will become a movement, someday it will be unstopable. Kinda like one of those snowballs that keeps getting bigger, it's kind of c

  • ... will be: Whose party is actually "third"?
  • Take a look at the url "MockElection-prezdebate.html". So who are they mocking?

  • Debates on C-SPAN? (Score:3, Informative)

    by clonebarkins ( 470547 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:17PM (#10452757)
    C-SPAN lists the third party debates as one of today's "events": http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan. csp?command=dprogram&record=181858431 [c-spanarchives.org]

  • I'm going (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JimBean ( 610952 )
    I'm going to the debate tonight (my organization is a co-sponsor). As others have already mentioned, Nader won't be there, although he's coming to Ithaca tomorrow night for a campaign stop (8PM, State Theater). C-SPAN is definitely taping the event, but I am not sure when they will air it. After seeing the past two televised debates between the major candidates, I am looking forward to some different political perspectives. There should also be many "interesting" people in attendence (people you can only f

  • BBC Radio 5 Live (Score:3, Informative)

    by dizzyduck ( 659517 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @02:59PM (#10453595) Homepage
    It might be broadcast on Radio 5 Live's Up all night [bbc.co.uk] programme. The Presidential and Vice Presidential debates were broadcast at least.

  • In related news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @03:40AM (#10457871)
    My dog will be holding an important press conference in the backyard tomorrow at 3pm. He will discuss his agenda if he's elected President.
  • While I wasn't able to attend the debate here at Cornell last night (the miniscule number of seats available were long sold out), our campus newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, wrote the following summary of the debate last night:

    "How many 'thirds' can there be?" was the question posed by Theodore Lowi, the J.L. Senior Professor of American Studies and moderator of last night's debate between third-party candidates in the upcoming presidential election. Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party, David Cobb

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