Wasted? Perhaps not. Useless and meaningless yes - at least in the grand scheme of things. I imagine you can get a personal feeling of commitment that you stood up for what and who you believed in instead of voting for the lesser of two evils or against someone instead of for someone.

Don't have any foolish dreams of your third party candidate having a chance in hell of winning an election in today's world.

For me, like you say, it's not about winning .. it's about standing FOR something, not against something. I am for a better system of at least 3 major parties instead of 2 ... competition is a good thing .. and sometimes a very necessary thing.

Agree, Sienna. I have on rare occasions chosen a 3rd party candidate in local to federal offices. It IS about making a statement, and knowing in your heart that you didn't follow a crowd or sell out your firmly held beliefs.

It's a wasted vote when one of the two major candidates is a lot worse than the other, and there is a real danger that the worse one will be elected. If they are just about equal, then third party isn't a problem.

We need to change the way officials are elected in this country. Instead of having a single vote that you give to one candidate, we need to be able to rank each candidate on a scale of -5 to +5 (or whatever. It should be an odd number of ranks so people who are undecided on a candidate can put their vote right in the middle). In this way, each candidate is considered on his or her own merits instead of how they compare to the other candidates. This will put all the parties on more even footing. People will be free to give a third party candidate a high rank since it wouldn't detract from the rank they give the Republican or Democratic candidates.

Basically, voting needs to not be a zero-sum game.

Mathematicians have been studying various methods of voting for hundreds of years. They don't agree which is best. They do agree that the method we use is one of the worst.

It really depends on the political system you have – where I am we have a prime minister (chief of the administrative powers and virtually the ‘guy in charge’) and we vote, not for him/her, but for the party which he/she’s been elected head of. But when you vote for a party, you’re electing representatives in the assembly (seats, if you will) not the candidate him/herself. The more seats a party has, the most likely it is for their candidate to be elected.
The catch is, although the elected party has the majority, the fact is when laws are being approved it’s easy for the smaller parties’ representatives to become the key factor, shifting the decision easily if they come together (and they often do for this purpose alone).
Many times there are as little as 3 seats, or even 1 representing a party – even independent (non-affiliated) elected seats make a difference.
One vote counts.

In a kind of election like the Presidency of the USA (I don’t get why you don’t have an election through universal suffrage), just vote for whoever you thing will get the job done for you,even if the candidate will clearly lose.

Just one note on this particular text –

America’s been badmouthing socialism for most of the 20th century, and I’m ok with that, because I agree it’s a crappy way to run a country.
But just remember the USA doesn’t have universal health care (like they do in the UK – a Constitutional Monarchy, not a Socialist ‘Republic’ ]read dictatorship[ ) and most European countries because such a measure was considered a step towards socialism and unfit for a country proud of its free capitalism…

The most striking blunder in the History of the country, IMO.
Also, you people have sh1tty, sh1tty conditions when it comes to work benefits. How can this happen or even be allowed in a free country? There're 300 million people living in the USA - I'm almost certain that you outnumber those who're in charge. Let them know it.