To think voting for the Green Party is a wasted vote?

[Rebecca2014]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30829222

For one thing you will be giving a greater chance of the Tories and UKIP winning the election due to the fact votes are being taken from Labour and the Lib Dems. You are not taking votes from UKIP, you are taking votes from Labour the party more likely to win the election.

Second my family live in Brighton and the Green Party have been awful there, the rubbish collections...the roads, do not talk about what they done for the motorist in that town.

If you are voting for the Greens, why???

I think people should be able to vote for whoever they wish and forwnphoever they believe in. It's called democracy.

Second that about Brighton. I have family and friends there and nobody would believe the unholy fuck up they've made of that city. If they can do it there they'll go right ahead and do it wherever they're elected. Rather waste your vote on the Monster Raving Loonies - if they still stand

I don't vote for who I think will win, I vote for the party who seems to be the best. I'm struggling on this years election on who to vote for.

I'm more bothered about the huge number of people that don't vote at all for whatever reasons.
Many because, rather like the conclusion to Animal Farm, you can't tell the humans from the pigs or make a moral choice any more. That's me for years, I always vote but sometimes it's hard to see the point.
I approve of some of the things the Greens have done in Brighton, and the rubbish collections have been a problem for years before they were in control of the council.

Well, my family live in Brighton and think the Greens are doing a great job.
I'd vote for them if they would stand in my constituency in May, but I doubt they'll fight the seat (Labour stronghold, no Green declared they'll stand yet).

I work in Brighton and haven't noticed an unholy fuck up.

Vote for who you want. But best to consider fully their policies across the board.

I don't want a Labour government and have always voted Conservative. I may well not going to vote Conservative again though as I can no longer really tell them apart from Labour and the Lib Dems seem similarly bad. Abstaining is not an option for me as I think that really is a wasted opportunity, so Green it might be. If that means Labour is less likely to get in then I think that a good thing, as they would be my least preferred choice.

"You are not taking votes from UKIP, you are taking votes from Labour the party more likely to win the election."

What a load of scaremongering tosh. If you vote Green, you are taking one vote from whichever party you would otherwise have voted for. If you'd otherwise have voted UKIP, you took a vote from UKIP. If you'd otherwise have voted Labout, you took a vote from Labour.

The trashing they get in the press re Brighton is not they experience I have had.

In the UK general elections, a vote for any party which doesn't win is a wasted vote.

And if anyone complains, we voted to keep it that way.

It's not a wasted vote.
for two reasons:
And voting green does not guarantee that labour don't get a vote and conservatives will win. (voting is more complex than voting either red/green on one side or blue/purple on the other). it's perfectly possible to have more values shared with the Conservatives than Labour (meaning that you would vote Con in a 2 horse race), and yet have more values shared with the greens than either of the others.

That article doesn't say that people joining the Green party as paid members has reduced the Labour party membership, and even if it could show correlation between Green party membership increases AND falls in paid membership to the Labour party, with Green paid members at £5 a year compares to £45 a year for Labour it's be impossible to form a positive correlation that couldn't have a simpler explanation of ~£50 a year is a lot to pay for nothing.

It's only the mainstream news through lazy reporting and wanting to pigeon hole people into categories that carries on this myth that if you want to vote green it means that you have to have wanted to vote labour, and that UKIP is just extreme conservatism. you can and should vote where your convictions are.

The second reason is that the political landscape and reporting of that political landscape has vastly changed. Now we actually get to hear about percentage of votes, and these are seen in that article.

Voting for the green party can and does show support for green party policies, it shapes the political landscape in a way that politicians should/have to listen to peoples views. (because it could be known that x% of the country would like to see a Green leader)

At one point Labour was just a fringe party, the only way to make fringe parties mainstream parties is by voting for them. and not believing the lie that if you vote for the green party that means you're definitely going to be ruled by any other party.

I've always seen my vote a a personal stance rather than for a specific party.
I'm also rather heartened by how green, environmentaly-friendly policies have become mainstream over the last 40 years. Like vegetarianism.
Time was that we were a very small group of weirdoes, cycling to the bottlebank 4 miles away and worrying about sustainability.

your vote for anyone in the current system where politicians are not legally obliged to keep to any election promises and are allowed to just GIVE all their votes to an opposing party without another election

*is a wasted vote

I can spell environmentally BTW, what I can't do is type well.

It's simple mathematics that a smaller party can only become a bigger and more powerful party by people voting for them. So saying that you support Green policies but won't vote for them because they're not big enough is just shooting yourself in the foot. People need to have the courage of their convictions and vote for the party they actually want to win.

I will be voting Green because not a single one of the other parties has given me any reason to believe that they give a shit about fixing the country instead of just making noise, blaming the poor and vulnerable for everything and getting rich by selling off public assets.

just to add for the avoidance of doubt that MrsLH and I are voting Green - AnnieLobeseder pretty much says it all

Your vote your choice.

I am very scared UKIP will do well. I am sure they will get bnp votes, ignorant and frustrated low iq people votes too. I have pulled up a few of their supporters with education on the ukip policy past and present. Their faces drop and then I end my monologue, this is how Hitler got power.

We have green councillors where I live and they're doing a fantastic job.

We also thankfully don't seem to have a ukip candidate.

I havent decided who I will vote for yet but it will not be one of labour or conservative anyway so I my vote will go to a "minority" party whatever happens.

I am voting for the party that stands for the policies I want to see actioned. That is the Green Party.

No vote is a wasted vote. I live in a true blue constituency. Should I therefore vote Tory because anything else won't make a difference? Of course not.

The FPTP system doesn't help, but if you live in Brighton you have a chance of returning Caroline Lucas as an MP.

I live in a safe Tory seat so my vote is wasted. At local level we have a community group so there is someone other than political parties to vote for but at national level I am disenfranchised.

I understand why people dislike the Libdems (the tuition fees thing was awful) but I also think that they have done a great deal to keep the Tories in check. Do you think we'd still have a NMW (inadequate though it is) or parental leave if it had just been the Tories? I don't. They've done what they can to destroy employment rights and that''s one of the main reasons they want us out of the EU as well so they can take even more rights away. Sacking someone for drinking a can of drink on the job (thread from yesterday - made me so upset for the lady concerned?) That's not the half of it.

I fear we'll get an overall Tory majority next time.

When I was about 15 (40 years ago) I had people taking the piss out of me for refusing to use spray deodorant. They banned CFCs. Friends of the Earth at the time were regarded as oddities. I joined the Labour party becuase it was nearest to my principles. Over the years said Labour party decided they were no longer true to their original principles, so I moved to The Green Party, not around when I was young.
As for your scaremongering nonsense, and it is nonsense, I vote with my head and then my conscience. A wasted vote is a vote that isn't used.

Maybe 1,000,000 also agree with the OP

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30842676

Almost one million voters are "missing" from the electoral register in England and Wales, Ed Miliband is to say .....

Totally agree with both AnnieL and JoanH - I'm voting Green this year, for the first time. I've tried to vote tactically in the past by choosing Lab or Lib or whatever I think would keep the Tories out; I failed. I'm choosing this time on what I think and believe.

The Greens need more people voting for them to get in, and I intend to be one of them.

I too am scared that UKIP will do well. I work with a few people who are very sympathetic with UKIP and to my disgust, I've tried to persuade them to vote Conservative instead, as a lesser evil. Better the devil you know and all that.