"Don't vote for Nader! He's just a wasted vote!"
"Nader stole votes from Gore in 2000! He's a spoiler!"
"Nader makes Hillary look like Cheney! He's as liberal as they come!"

Yeah, we've heard all of these a few times by now. Some of them are true, some are exaggerations. All of them are meant to keep people from voting for the current third party candidate that threatens to disrupt the system of Republicans vs. Democrats.

I'm going to analyze these theories and give my reasons on why they may or may not be true:

Nader's votes (as well as any other third party) are wasted
No votes are ever wasted. In 1996 billionaire H. Ross Perot made the strongest third party run for the presidency and nearly pulled in one in five votes. The success of his campaign helped create a viable third party that would eventually put a wrestler in the capital of Minnesota. Even if you know that a third party candidate has no chance of winning the election, it never hurts to vote for them. Remember: even the Republicans were a third party at one point.

Nader was the spoiler of the 2000 election
During the 2000 election a little over 70,000 votes in Florida went to Ralph Nader. Many believe that these votes would have gone to Vice President Al Gore and given him the state (as well as the presidency). I don't think that this was true. If people wanted to vote for Gore, they would have voted for Gore. Gore was quite adept at gaining some of the more populous states, but he was having trouble with the states in the "sticks" (including his home state of Tennessee.) Most of the folks that I know that voted for Nader said that if he wasn't running they simply wouldn't have voted that year.

Nader is extremely liberal
No arguments here. If you look up his policies, you'll find that he has extremist views that are almost considered radical. Sure, he wants to pull back all of the troops, but he practically wants to cut of the U.S. from the rest of the world. He wants to legalize stem cell research. And, he wants to keep abortion legal. All of these views sound the same as the Democrats, but he also wants to cut off oil companies and any major corporations that are making what he believes is too much money. He could have a very big impact on the election by offering an alternative to Hillary and/or Obama who are still trying to pander to the more conservative voters or at least the "fence-sitters"

By timing his entry into the election the way he did Nader looks like he might get some more independent voters to cast their votes this year, but I don't think he'll win. It's a shame too. It would be a nice kick in the teeth to the two party system if he were able to prove them all wrong and "steal" the election from them.

Learn more about this author, David Furritus.
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