So you don’t like Trump or Harris – here’s why it’s still best to vote for one of them
So you don’t like Trump or Harris – here’s why it’s still best to vote for one of them
If you’re an unhappy voter and want other unhappy voters to hold their noses and vote for the major candidate they least dislike, think about the Golden Rule.
It has been said a gazillion times over the last few months, but is it getting through to those who need to hear it?
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And remember: a "protest" third party vote is a vote for Trump.
If neither Harris nor Trump gets 270 electoral votes....
[If] No one gets to 270 and the House of Representatives, voting on behalf of the 50 states, is entrusted to pick the next president. What could possibly go wrong with that constitutionally mandated solution?
-- What if no candidate wins 270 electoral votes?
Edit: I feel like this fact is often overlooked.
A protest vote to a third party is actually a protest vote to whoever you prefer less. You're essentially just removing yourself as a voter and making it more likely the person you like less is elected... we often say "third party is a vote for Trump" since most of lemmy is sane - but for a staunch conservative a vote for a third party is a vote for Harris.
I'd encourage everyone to vote regardless of your leaning - having low voter turnout allows more shitty shenanigans.
Yep, we also say that because there are a lot of astroturf accounts pushing Stein and De La Cruz on Lemmy that are hyper-critical of Harris but suspiciously never want to talk about what a shitbag Trump is.
That's because Harris is Satan and Trump is my Daaaaddy
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I’m really encouraged by the fact that universalmonk and return2ozma’s posts get heavily downvoted when they push this slop in Lemmy
Trump admits he's a shit bag, Harris pretends she's not.
Hope whatever shareblue is calling itself these days finally stops getting funded when Harris loses.
They don't push them. They just push back against Democrats that invent lies about Stein. It seems most Democrats can't handle truths about Harris praising and committing to funding war criminals like Netanyahu & Dick Cheney.
we can handle them just fine because the fact of the matter is trump would be way worse for Palestine. There's a reason Netanyahu prefers Trump.
Stein would be better by your logic because she'd stop sending multibillion dollar thank you checks to Israel whenever they kill American journalists.
no, because stein is a stooge and has no chance at all of winning anyway. that's the entire point of the article.
Why is she a stooge? You don't like democracy or you scared Kamala supporting war criminals might mean Stein has more of an impact than you'd like to admit?
She is funded by republicans and has no experience in government whatsoever. She is utterly unqualified for running the most powerful country on earth. She literally only exists to take votes from democrats.
Republicans fund Democrat candidates all the time if they think it will help them. It doesn't mean she is a Republican or has Republican policies. Russians funded Bernie in 2016.
Every other candidate exists to take votes from another candidate. She is against funding genocide in Israel.
People crave a non-establishment politician. So this whole, she isn't the "establishment" thing you got going on doesn't help your case at all. Are you saying she doesn't have experience on being a corporate puppet like establishment politicians do? And that is a bad thing why?
I'm not talking about republican-leaning citizens, I'm talking about the literal Republican Party funding Stein. Trump's personal attorney Jay Sekulow has represented Stein in various court cases around this election.
So this whole, she isn’t the “establishment” thing
nice straw man.
Are you saying she doesn’t have experience on being a corporate puppet like establishment politicians do? And that is a bad thing why?
I'm saying she literally has no experience with how government works, in any aspect. She's a physician. She has no law degree, no experience in legislation at any level, no experience in administration at any level. No foreign policy experience at all (except dining with Putin). I'd sooner vote for AOC to be president than Jill Stein.
Yeah, also, Conservatives are more 'fall in line' voters, so there's less vote splitting on the Right than on the Left. Libertarians do appeal to the people opposed to both eyes in the boardroom and eyes in the bedroom on both the Left and the Right, but for the most part, the GQP follows the 'Vote for the Conservative in the Primary and the Republican in the General' more than we follow its inverse (replace Conservative with Liberal and Republican with Democrat). And for Republicans afraid of a Trump presidency, come join us and vote for Harris. Then maybe go work on de-Trumping your party after they lose with you helping us. ;)
You… do know that the right gets like…. 4x the 3rd party vote compared to the left. Like what you say is 100% false.
Libertarians+constitution got like 1.2% compared to PSL+greens 0.31% last presidential election iirc.
But also, if the DNC wanted the 3rd party vote they could simply… court it… instead of pissing on it? To say they cost the vote when the DNC continually shot Bernie in the face in 2016, using funds meant to promote the DNC candidate to campaign against a Democrat candidate makes it FOR SURE THE 3RD PARTY VOTERS FAULT. NOTHING THE DNC COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY TO NOT LOSE. THEY WERE PERFECT FOR REFUSING TO ADOPT LEGALIZED WEED, SOCIAL PROGRAMS, MEDICARE FOR ALL, ETC. IN FACT, IT IS GOOD THEY ARE STILL REFUSING TO DO SO AND ALSO REFUSING TO JUST NOT GIVE BILLIONS TO SUPPORT AN ACTIVE GENOCIDE. THAT’LL SHOW THIRD PARTY VOTERS THE TRUE MEANING OF DEMOCRACY!
I like that it's the Democrats fault for whenever these issues failed, and not the Republicans who universally vote against them. Remove every Republican and I bet we start seeing these issues getting passed.
Talking about simply adopting the policy to the DNCs platform, which they won’t. Not about it actually passing, which they still should be able to do but is out of the question when they don’t even want it.
At least it’s the newly elected House that starts its session in January, right?
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Yes, but unfortunately they vote by state not individually
This government really is held together with hopes and dreams, isn’t it?
It always was. Sometimes that's stronger than other times.
Ah my favourite AJJ quote: "Hope is for presidents and dreams are for people who are sleeping"
Wait... you can actually have someone NOT get 270 votes?
Oh... duh... 3rd parties taking some. You think it'd just be whoever has the most electoral college votes then... Alas, needlessly complicating things.
Yeah. It has been that way since the founding of the country. The winner not only must have the most votes, they must get half of the available EVs, rounding up. This was learned early on in the history of the US, when four Democratic-Republicans ran for President, and nobody got the required number of votes. This happened in 1824, barely half a century after the US was founded. It resulted in Andrew Jackson (Trump's role model, BTW), getting 99 EVs, John Q. Adams winning 84 EVs, William H. Crawford (who had a stroke) winning 41 EVs, and Henry Clay winning 37 EVs. Per the 12th Amendment of the US constitution, nobody had a straight majority here, so the top three vote getters (disqualifying Henry Clay) advanced to the House of Representatives. Clay's supporters in Congress threw their weight behind John Q. Adams, giving him a straight majority over the top candidate, Andrew Jackson, and Adams gave Clay a spot in his cabinet. Capping this shitstorm off was Andrew "Sore Loser" Jackson throwing a fit, calling it a 'corrupt bargain', in a very Trumpian temper tantrum.
IMO, what happened in 1828 (and again in 1837 with the VP) is an important history lesson for voters thinking of voting Third Party. Unless you can somehow convince 50% + 1 people to pick your Third Party candidate in 270 EV worth of states, your best bet is to get that candidate to run for a local election and become a vocal proponent for fixing the US electoral system. Because you'd hate to have 269 EV go for Harris, 81 go to a mix of Left-Wing Third Party candidates, and 188 go to Trump, then have the election thrown to the House, where the Trumpian states give Trump the win despite the Left-wing candidates winning in a landslide were those EVs have gone to a single person. And even that's an unrealistic scenario. Only two people who have not had an R or D behind their name have gotten EVs in my lifetime, and both of them were from faithless electors, NOT from winning an EV. You're not going to win the Presidency with 1% of the vote. But you WILL throw your state over to the bad guy if your 1% share makes the difference between Harris winning and Trump winning.
There are a lot of reasons why you shoulnd't vote for third party for US Presidential Elections. The EC is just one of them.
Doesn't have to be a 3rd party. With the way proportional voting works in NE and ME, it is possible, however unlikely, that there will be a 269-269 tie vote.
They could tie at 269.
Lol, yeah. The article I linked is from earlier this year and about Biden/Trump/Kennedy, but the gist of it still applies.