That part of your argument lacks actual content to address.

So you don't want to engage with it in good faith. Got it.

If the system PUNISHES voters for supporting their favorite candidate, the system is flawed.

But you're only going to think in those terms if you accept in the first place that voting is supposed to be a way for individual voters to "show support." I'm arguing that it should be thought of as a way of participating in the very final moments a long, collaborative decision-making process that mostly consists of an ongoing public conversation that usually has relatively little to do with elections.

You are literally blaming the voters for not gaming the system properly, rather than asking why it is that the system requires gaming at all.

See, this is the crux of our problem: you think of it as "gaming." I think of it as correctly understanding what it actually means to cast a vote. It isn't a way for you to let the world know who would be president, if you only we were wise enough to leave it entirely up to you. It's your chance to play a role in a collective decision being made by hundreds of millions of people who have been very publicly deliberating about it for months (or arguably even years) before election day.

t's not that third parties fail because they are too stubborn to compromise... It's that because third parties are doomed to failure by the system.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but you haven't shown this.

Also, I'm going to post this again, because I think it's really important