5d ago

Voters today

125 comments

Pointless statements from liberals who are too busy trying to find someone to blame to do anything useful about the galloping fascism in their midst.
- Seriously. Same old useless shit as always.
- Luckily the millions of protest nonvoters are taking action to stop this fucked situation.
  Right?
  Oh, no, wait, people like me are fucked because it was never anything other than posing for purity points with your online friends.
  And if we have actual elections in 2028, none of you will learn a goddamn thing.
  The blood of millions doesn't matter a single goddamn whit to any of you so long as you can talk about LIBS BAD.
  
  I'm less worried about the voters than the party that tries to appeal to its opposition rather than its own base. The Democrats deliberately threw the election again, imo.
- It's wild that they're angry at people for not wanting to be complicit w a genocide rather than the people who forced us to choose between 2 genociders or even the genociders themselves.
  
  Yeah. its like there were two choices and everything that has happened so far was predicted over and over and STILL people voted for a lotto win vs stopping the worst case. Given the international meddling, it makes the clueless gits more hapless.
  
  there were more than two choices and everyone predicted that repeatedly choosing the lesser evil will lead to this and here we are.
  
  There are not more than two choices in a FPTP voting system.
  
  there are third parties and independents and mexico & sheinbaum prove are viable once you stop drinking the 2-party kool aide
  
  Mexico is not a purely FPTP system; there are elements of ranked choice at the national level for their legislature. That makes it possible for 3rd parties to build a power base an support sufficient to win the presidency, which is a FPTP election.
  Unless and until there is election reform to allow ranked-choice voting--which Repubs and Dems will both oppose, and which is illegal in some states--you can not realistically have 3rd parties winning. Unless and until 3rd parties build up their power by winning at state and local elections, they will not win national offices. Right now, 3rd parties have no foundation of power that they can use to win national elections.
  The closest the US has come in the last one hundred years to a 3rd party presidential win was H. Ross Perot, over 30 years ago. Before that, you have to look at Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose party, right around the time of the Great War.
  
  nor is the united states a purely fptp system as evidenced by examples like main, alaska and nebraska.
  add to that states like georgia's, mississippi's, & louisiana's runoff elections; non-partisan primaries in california and washington; and the senate switching away from state legislature appointment in the 20th century means that fptp is as much a willful choice as drinking the 2-party kool aide.
  sheinbaum proves that once you stop drinking that kool aide, things start to get better and the only thing holding us back is the shared false belief that doing so is nonviable.
  
  Okay, first: Nebraska elects via plurality. That's arguably worse in this case, because if 30% of the electorate votes Democratic, 25% DSA, and 45% Republican, the Republican candidate wins. That means that 3rd party candidates are in an even worse position.
  Alaska has a real ranked-choice system, but also has the minimum number of senators (2), representatives (1), and 3 electoral college votes, which is the lowest that it's possible to have. (Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, and Vermont all also have only 3 electoral college votes.) That means that Alaska is largely irrelevant nationally, as they have minimal input on national policy, or ability to affect the outcome of the presidential election. Note that they got ranked choice voting because of a ballot initiative; only half of the states allow for that in the first place. Ohio, California, and Michigan are the most substantial states that allow ballot initiatives. Texas--which has the most electoral votes after California--does not. The states with the most representatives and electoral college votes generally do not.
  Run-off elections aren't the same as not being FPTP. Without ranked choice, they're still functionally FPTP, because they drop all but the bottom two candidates. So your 3rd party candidates are going to get kicked off the ballot in run-offs, and you're also likely to see much lower turnout. (That's the only reason that Georgia has Ossof and Warnock as senators; they both won in run-offs that had far, far lower turnout than the general election.)
  All you're really doing here is proving that you don't understand how winning elections work. If you want to win nationally with a 3rd party, you need to put in the work at the local level first, then the state level, and you need to build a large coalition across multiple states. Without doing that first, bitching about the national elections is verbal masturbation.
  
  no one is saying that a state level action isn't needed to make change (it wasn't necessary in mexico btw) and being so dismissive of real efforts to undo fptp's entrechment is the biggest part of the anti-3rd-party groupthink.
  the only thing that this proves is that you're so thoroughly marinated in the 2-party kool aide that you're incapable of imaging a different reality that's already living and breathing at our southern border; or atleast it does until the same ruling class that forced us to use ftpt (and also gave you and an overwhelming majority such a myopic view of voting) regime changes mexico to force them back into another, effectively, 2-party rule... again.
  all voting systems have flaws; don't let that stop you from abondoning the clearly abusive one we have now; and the false dichotomy with democrats & republicans only in this country is re-enforced everytime you repeat it to yourself and others; don't do the ruling class' job of spreading propaganda for them and for free.
- Fuck you people for opening the barn door. We're sick of cleaning up your mess.

125 comments