{"id":3930,"date":"2016-07-30T17:05:30","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T22:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3930"},"modified":"2016-07-30T17:07:59","modified_gmt":"2016-07-30T22:07:59","slug":"vote-green-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2016\/07\/30\/vote-green-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Where (Not) to Vote for the Green Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a skeptic, I have profound\u00a0concerns regarding\u00a0the Green Party. They have promoted “the use of complementary and alternative therapies such as herbal medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine” and claimed that “[c]hronic conditions are often best cured by alternative medicine,” in their official platform statement<\/a>\u00a0on social justice in health care. They have a long\u00a0history of fear-mongering<\/a> on GMOs, currently “support[ing] a moratorium until safety can be demonstrated by independent (non-corporate funded), long-term tests for food safety,” despite widespread scientific consensus<\/a>\u00a0that GMOs are safe for consumption. The party even opposes the fluoridation of drinking water<\/a> in their most recent statement on ecological sustainability<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"bdf6caf0b618b625e662592ef13fba92\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To put something of a fine point on it, the Green Party is the party of woo<\/a>. I do not expect to see self-identified skeptics flocking to their banner any time soon.\u00a0Not all atheists are skeptics, though, and my heavily secular social feeds are telling me that there is support building for #DemExit<\/a> among some disaffected secular voters.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/WelshAtheistChi\/status\/758871757612658688<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/worldhumanist\/status\/758195941123862529<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what “100” is supposed to denote here, but probably you get the idea. Jill Stein\u00a0actually needs to get to 270<\/a> (electoral votes) and it is at least theoretically<\/em> possible that she could, given that she is already on the ballot in most of the heavily populated states.\u00a0As of this month, the dark green states are where the Green Party will be on the ballot<\/a> in November:<\/p>\n

\"final_ba_map-ppt-Vermont\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Realistically, though, we cannot reasonably expect Stein will actually win any<\/em> of these states. She may well\u00a0have an election-altering\u00a0effect, however, just as the Green Party did back in 2000<\/a>\u00a0when they helped put George W. Bush over the top in the key swing state of Florida.<\/p>\n

Might history repeat itself this time around? In grey we have the so-called “tipping point states,” that is, those which are most likely to swing the 2016 election, according to FiveThirtyEight<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Via<\/a>
Map generated via 270toWin<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Taking these two maps together, we can see that the places where a vote for Jill Stein is most likely to help tip the election (in favor of Donald Trump) are Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, and New Jersey. If you live and vote in any of those six states, please carefully consider whether you are willing to risk tipping the election in favor of the least qualified<\/a> and most unpredictable<\/a>\u00a0candidate in living memory. If you live anywhere else, go ahead and let your freak flag fly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a skeptic, I have profound\u00a0concerns regarding\u00a0the Green Party. They have promoted “the use of complementary and alternative therapies such…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-skepticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}