roomforthetuna posted:

The problem with voting for the lesser of two evils is the Overton window still gets shifted further in the direction of evil every cycle.
The problem with voting for nothing is the Overton window still gets shifted in the direction of evil, and by more than it would have been had you voted for the lesser evil, assuming everyone else's votes are between the big two. And the risk of the greater evil winning in the short term is also increased by the non-vote.
Voting for a third party stands some chance of shifting the Overton window towards that party's policies, even if that party's existence acts as a spoiler and lets the greater evil win. Perhaps especially if it acts as a spoiler. In the short term the risk of the greater evil winning is still increased.

I'm in favor of the longer term goal that suggests voting for a third party, because I've witnessed the effect of the Overton window moving to almost exclusively Neoliberal options in several countries, and it sucks. Voting for the lesser evil doesn't even prevent the greater evil from winning, half the time, so the "protest vote" in the hope that maybe later the flow of poo poo can be stopped seems more valuable than a vote to maybe weakly slow the flow of poo poo.

A different voting system sure would be nice though, so I could fruitlessly vote both to shift the Overton window in my preferred direction and weakly slow the flow of poo poo.