Just make sure it does work, this plan… The world doesn’t want Trump back…
Sounds like you’re very concerned with the spoiler effect that is inherent with First Past The Post voting.
Feel free to stop by my ask lemmy Post to discuss your post election commitment to replace FPTP voting in your state.
Edit: whew this comment section sure was a trip. You blue conservatives are some of the most terrible people I’ve had the pleasure of talking with. You are just awful people, and I am ashamed of sharing a country with you.
Blue MAGA indeed.
I was really frustrated with my state legislature in Oregon. They put ranked choice on the ballot this year, but it was poorly written. These things are hard to revisit once passed, so I eventually decided to vote it down. Hopefully they’ll put it on in 2 or 4 years, but better written.
You gotta hand it to the conservatives. Even if Trump loses, they were successful in pushing the Democrats further to the right. Imagine arguing that the genocide they’re aiding and abetting is the least evil choice.
I voted Stein in Georgia. My vote never belonged to Harris, so me not voting for her has taken nothing away.
Maybe stop assuming people will vote for candidates, and start earning those votes.
I’m german and since 2016 I learned a lot about the US political landscape, figureheads, voting systems, political events, media etc.
I don’t want to be condescending. It’s just l spent way to much time reading articles, watching us media and documentaries to let that knowledge go to waste, so…I’m pretty confident to say that voting 3rd party, no matter who, is a bad decision. This election even more as the long-time future of your country depends on it so much.
You probably heard of the main argument against 3rd party already, namely the winner-take-all system:
Imagine 1000 people in an election district. 500 are hardcore MAGAs hellbent on voting orange Mussolini. 400 are “Vote Blue no matter who”, 100 are “Both sides bad let’s force a system change”.
Ok got it? Mussolini wins. Even worse: he wins all of the electoral college voters of the district which unanimously vote the president. This pretty safe wasn’t a very accurate description and the numbers are purposefully skewed to illustrate the principle. But at the end this is it. Your whole presidential election system needs to be reformed to truly can be called fair, democratic and make every vote, even 3rd party, count. If you want to know it more specifically google “Duverger’s Law”.
I repeat: Every 3rd party vote is a vote for Trump. That is why the European Greens have just advised Jill Stein to suspend her campaign. MAGA did this by letting Robert F. Kennedy suspend his campaign and endorse Trump. They learned from 2016 that when 3rd party voter turnout was at a record high 6% that it made Trump president. 2020 was only 2% 3rd party voter turnout. Good for Biden.
This all is bad enough and all the neverending crimes against humanity in Gaza are horrifying but under Trump the genocide will get worse. To understand this I would have to deviate into the connection of the US radical evangelists, the Heritage Foundation and Trump as well as his shared interest with Netanyahu. Oh yeah you also will get the chance to watch the USA transform into its final form of a white, rich, male, christian hypercapitalist dystopia.
Hope you can see now how 3rd party could backfire gigantically. If you understood it after considering the facts again, don’t be angry with yourself. Just make sure you prevent others from making the same mistake these next 2 days when you see them walking into the same fatal trap.
I’d vote for Stein if she were to made even the smallest effort to earn it. But cozying up to genocidal dictators and not doing jack shit three out of every four years isn’t going to net her any support from me.
Personally, I’d rather vote for someone that may not be perfect, but at least can show their work.
Genocidal dictators like Netanyahu are acceptable?
I wanted to vote for De La Cruz, but Dems sued her off of the ballot in my state. That cost them my down ballot support, too.
Unfortunately, the US’s winner-takes-all voting system makes it so that your (entirely reasonable and otherwise simply correct) mindset leads to what’s called the Spoiler Effect, where a third party vote actually just ends up helping your least favorites. Because of this, the winner-takes-all system inevitably leads to two dominant parties, and being forced to vote for the shiniest of two turds. To fix this, we just need a different voting system. I’m partial to approval voting, but more likely that’d be ranked choice.
I think the confusion here is that Harris voters, even the reluctant ones, see her as an acceptable alternative to Trump. But I don’t. Both of them are so completely unacceptable options for me.
Imagine the election were between Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Or Hitler vs Mussolini. Or whatever match up would finally make you say, ‘I can’t possibly support either of these hideous fucks.’ I’m already there with Harris vs Trump.
I’ve seen so many thousands of images and videos this year of children torn to shreds in Gaza. I just can’t fucking do it.
The confusion is that you, and others who are spouting off the same nonsense, really seem hellbent on ignoring that you’re getting one of them as your next president if you are a citizen of the US.
“I’m not voting for either” gets you nowhere. Worse, it withholds a vote from a candidate who isn’t a full-blown, mask-off, dangerous fascist.
This is the compass you have to work with:
I presume you want to be somewhere around here:
Or even here:
But you can’t get there from where we are right now, and you sure as hell can’t do it if you end up with the red circle.
The closest you can get to what you want in this election is the blue circle. So the logical thing to do in this election is to hold your nose, get over your “moral authority”, and vote for the one viable option that is even remotely close to your ideal candidate.
Voting third party in FPTP doesn’t benefit any candidate except the viable candidate least aligned with your ideal. You are contributing to a possible Trump victory by refusing to vote for the only other candidate that can win this election.
Everyone I’ve encountered who regurgitates the “Harris isn’t acceptable” line of thinking falls back to “voting for Harris makes you complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza” but refuses to acknowledge that, if we apply the same logic, voting for a non-viable candidate makes you complicit in the same genocide, along with every other shit thing that will happen in a second, more disastrous Trump term.
“I didn’t vote for him though,” carries no water, because if you lean left of Harris and vote third party in this election you’ve taken support from the only viable candidate and in doing so made the shift towards fascism easier to enact.
There isn’t a third option.
You get the neoliberal that will be broadly disappointing, and likely perpetuate the situation in Palestine, or you get the open fascist that will make everything far worse - including Palestine, and potentially end US democracy. Both are bad, there’s a yawning chasm of difference between the two.
Your spectacularly priveliged abstaineousness and the false equivalence you’re drawing (even on the single issue you’ve pointed to) in such a critical swing state is cripplingly naiive, and gambles with the lives of who knows how many Palestinians, Ukrainians, and Americans. To sit back and vote for a Russian asset in this context is frankly disgusting.
There are 1,458 days of the election cycle to push for better - there’s only one for keeping the fascists out of power, and you chose not to.
