Voting One's Conscience

[MH1]

18. That would only be true in the following cases:

1) if the US presidential election used a ranked-choice voting system such as instant run-off or actual run-off. It doesn't.

2) if there was a viable third party candidate that realistically had a chance of beating BOTH major party candidates, or NOT beating the Democratic candidate, in the first and only round of our "winner take all, no majority required" system. There won't be.

Referring back to option 1: in the US, the GE effectively IS the "run-off" election. If your preferred candidate doesn't make it to the run-off, then you have the choice to sit it out, but in that case you aren't voting against the republican candidate, you're just not voting. If you vote for, say, Jill Stein (even though Bernie has asked his supporters to support Hillary, as I expect he will), you're just documenting your preference for someone who will never ever win a presidential election in this country - which might be great for your conscience but will have ZERO influence on the outcome of the election - so therefore is not a vote that counts as to who leads this country and who picks the next Supreme Court justice. You could have influenced those things, but chose not to. If your conscience is okay with that, then you're right, it's in good shape, and won't trouble YOU at all.