Petulantly throwing away your vote on a hopeless third-party candidate is a form of bad faith within the social contract. It's asking for a free ride, refusing to pay or to take any responsibility for the "messed up system," but self-importantly expecting that same system to convey you to your personal destination anyway.
Dan Savage is right: the only people who reason this way are "assholes" (to use Aaron James' term)--i.e., those deluded by an entrenched sense of entitlement to believe that they--because of some presumed superior intelligence or wit or morality or wealth--have a natural right to special opt-out privileges (euphemistically called "voting one's conscience") not accorded to ordinary "little" people--people who, in their inferiority, remain bound by the social contract and obligated to ensure (by voting for a candidate who has an actual chance of winning) that the asshole gets his free ride. Quite dishonest and egotistical reasoning, that. I don't like it.
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