3mo ago

Nevar Forget

337 comments

Stein wasn't even the only third party candidate stealing votes. I voted for Gary Johnson with the Libertarian party as a "protest vote". Glancing at national results, he had almost three times as many votes as Stein did.
I was 100% the moron this meme is targeted towards. I voted for Harris yesterday.
- But you aren’t a moron if you learned from your mistakes. It means the opposite.
  I wish we had ranked choice voting. Then these protest votes would still work and not screw with the system so bad and we could fight the stranglehold of the two party system.
  
  I want something like this where I live. We have FPTP here, but we have a viable third option in some areas. I'd be happier to to have more than 2 robust parties on the national stage.
  
  My state is trying to constitutionally ban the use of ranked choice systems 🫠 fingers crossed the muppets just drew enough awareness to implement it after we reject this amendment
- Hey good on you for being open to change your stance. So many people these days cant.
- I was that moron too in 2016.
  Never again.
- Thanks, bro. Legit appreciate it.
- Me too Stein in 2016. I was so mad at Clinton for what they did to Sanders. I am voting Harris as soon as voting is open here.
  
  Bernie deserved so much better, and I fucking hate the way the 2016 democrats fucked him over.
- Same same man... Voting blue on Monday.
- Third party voting; the really real reason Democrats and Republicans can't get their candidates elected. lol
- The Jill Stein hate requires a lot of ignorance and very little faith in the candidate running at the head of the Democratic Party.
  Obama crushed McCain and Romney, green party be damned. Biden squeaked by Trump on thinner margins than Trump beat Hilary. Nobody cared about Stein in that race.
  What changed? Why are Democrats so terrified of the green party all of a sudden?
  
  Because Biden just squeaked by Trump. Leading to 50%-ish of the US population and 80%-ish of Republican voters believing that the last election got stolen. Also leading to a lot of election officials in key states being replaced by fair election denying nutjobs.
  Haven't you been paying attention in the past few years?
  I'm not even in the US and I'm already exhausted with the BS that's upcoming, if there's no landslide victory for any of the candidates.
  Be aware that any third party vote will be a vote for trump. If that's what you truly want, I fear for your sanity.
  Btw, it's not true that nobody cared about Stein in the previous election. Back then they too said "a vote for Stein is a vote for trump". You may not have heard it personally, but that message was out there. And it's still true today!
  
  And the Shill Stein love requires zero common sense, and a shit load of entitlement.
  
  This, but since dot world is infested with Reddit liberals you're getting down voted into oblivion.

a vote for stein is a vote for trump, both of which are a vote for poo-tin
- But I didn't want Clinton to win. My picks were: 1. Lessig, 2. Sanders, 3. Stein, 4. Johnson (Gary), 5. blank. Knowing only what I knew in 2016, I disliked Trump and Clinton equally, and would never have voted for either one.
  (And yes, I did know that Sanders had endorsed Clinton.)
  
  I would hope that you learned something from your error, but this comment shows clearly you haven't. I learned it when I voted for John Anderson and in my tiny way contributed to Reagan winning: in America, you vote to keep the worst fascist out of power, and if it means voting for someone who isn't perfect but has the numbers to do it, that's who you vote for. The primary may be your opportunity to show support for other parties, and you can go to rallies and spread the good word to influence the discussion, but until the day your third party candidate has enough potential votes to actually win it, you help hold the wall.
  
  We wouldn't have a 6-3 conservative supreme court with Clinton, along with a rash of conservative lower courts. Not only have we had extreme fallout from this already. But it will be affecting us for decades.
  A bunch of our red states likely wouldn't have swung to extremism, like my home state which went from Asa Hutchinson to Sarah Huckabee-Sanders. I don't know if my kids will legally be allowed to learn that slavery existed in school.

Also, the 2000 Presidential election results in Florida:
- Ah yes, the true stolen election. But Al Gore conceded, even though it really was too close to call.
- the electoral votes column juxtaposed with the other columns is just documenting what should be a crime.
- Oh my god what a tight race. I wonder what the closest vote in US history was.
- Since all 'electoral votes' go to the winner in the US, why do they even bother mentioning it? Its seems entirely vestigial
  
  US states have the option of choosing to distribute votes proportionally.
- My brother is voting for Jill Stein to "send a message to the Democrats" that they can't automatically rely on liberal votes. He voted for Nader in 2000 to "send a message to the Democrats" that they can't automatically rely on liberal votes. When I mention the 24-year gap here his response is "what's your point?"
- I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and will never make that mistake again.
  
  Not to worry, Nader hasn't been a candidate in a long time. Good luck out there!
- That’s the official count, but we’ll never know what the actual count was. A bunch of people who “voted” for Nader were trying to vote for Gore but got screwed over by the format of the ballot.
- Holy shit, 2,912,790 people voted for Dubya in Florida?! How come nobody noticed this before? I feel like that might have affected the outcome of the election.

I didn't actually realize the numbers were that high for her... Ffs.
They know what they're doing. The elections in swing states are always down to razor margins. The right spoiler is almost a guaranteed win for the opponent :/
- Third parties help the democrats because the biggest third party is more right-aligned.
  In Michigan Gary Johnson got 172,136 votes, in Pennsylvania he got 146,715, and in Wisconsin he got 106,674. If all Greens voted Clinton and all Libertarians voted Trump then New Mexico would've only been won by Clinton with around 1,000 votes, Colorado would've also been nearly Trump. Nevada, New Hampshire, and Minnesota would've been won by Trump. Maine might've gone majority Trump.
- Third parties certainly know what effect they have. Their motivation is not to make the second party candidate win. Their motivation is to change the first party candidate.
  According to Hotelling's Law, a two-party political system with FPTP voting results in candidates that are very similar. This is why the Democrats won't run real progressives for most offices, and why Sanders was forced out in 2016 with the excuse that he wasn't "electable" enough.
  Third parties running for president aren't trying to win. They're trying to eat some of the votes on their side, thus pulling the main party candidates toward that third party candidate to reclaim those votes.
  
  Third parties certainly know what effect they have.
  Third party candidates that are running specifically in presidential elections and nothing else.
  Third parties that actually want to move the needle participate in local elections, caucus with a major party for ballot access, etc. (WFP)
  Their motivation is not to make the second party candidate win.
  Bullshit.
  Green's team literally stated the goal was for Kamala to lose.
  
  I have no idea why this is being downvoted. Thanks for the info.

/* in countries with a broken democracy

I voted for Harris yesterday, and I’ll be voting for Harris again tomorrow. Just kidding. Turns out the dead person whose identity I stole wasn’t registered to vote. 😞
- You make jokes, but tomorrow this comment will be on FOX as proof them libs are cheating...
  
  Well, they read it in a forum where anybody can write anything, so it must be true. They are truly the best at fair and balanced ripoartign.

I might risk voting 3rd party if this election wasn't a choice between boring corporatists and 100% concentrated evil.
The stakes are just too damn high to risk letting Trump get back into the White House again.
- it's not worth it until first past the post is removed.
  Until then it's mathematically impossible for a third party candidate to win. Focus your energy instead on removing first past the post, then you have a chance
  
  The only time I went third party it wasn't to win. It was because I saw it as two main candudates so shirty that there was a good chance for third party to snag more voters than usual, possibly enough to gain slightly better recognition in the future.
  The monkey's paw curled.
  We got Trump. The recognition came as irrational blame for Trump.
  I won't make the same mistake of voting for someone I think would do the best job. Now it's merely an effort to keep the worst viable candidate out.
- Honesty is refreshing. I’m voting for Harris because I don’t want to see Trump’s orange face every week. Yes, I know what she is. Yes, I know what that makes me. I’ve made my peace with it. No, I don’t blame others who feel differently.
  
  I've always critiqued the democrats but I'm so tired of trump. I will vote for a thousand boring democrats if it means removing these entitled, lying MAGA idiots from anything resembling power. They all belong in lunatic asylums, not in government.
- This is the way.
- The elections will always be between "boring corporatist and 100% concentrated evil". Every election feels like it's the most important one. You just gotta suck it up and vote third party regardless.
  
  Except this time there is a literal fascist running. The third party argument doesn't work when we've got a candidate quoting Hitler and promising that this will be the last election you'll have to vote in.
  
  That doesn’t have to be the case. I’ve never felt that we had pure evil to battle until Trump was a candidate. Historically there’s been mostly two sets of policies and I prefer one or the other

Ranked choice voting eliminates the concept of spoiler candidates/parties.
- You are correct. Also, OP is correct.
- The duopoly of power won't add ranked choice voting
  
  People said this about weed. We literally had two states add it in like the last 10 years. Once a few more states pass RCV via initiative we'll start seeing legislatures take it up on their own.

If this were true then American politics really are terrible. Minority should hold seats. America needs to revisit representation.
- It’s actually not entirely true, it only counts stein as the only 3rd party (the libertarian candidate in PA got 3x as many votes as her, I’d bet those 3rd party votes wouldn’t have gone to Clinton) AND doesn’t report factual numbers.
  It’s just not true.
  That said unfortunately voting for a 3rd party candidate is largely useless in the USA and the forces trying to get their opponents voters to vote 3rd party are probably more overwhelming then the forces actually compelling folks to vote 3rd party.
  FPTP needs to die in the USA.
- This is the way.

Support ranked choice voting

I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of these voters. Maybe I'm just consuming the wrong media, but it feels like third-party voters get 50x the blame nonvoters get for ruining elections with probably something like a thousandth of the population. I basically never see this discussion call out both third-party voters and nonvoters equally.
I keep seeing third-party voters maligned for thinking a candidate has hope to win a national election, I see so many arguments to address why third-party candidates can't win. In spite of that, I have never come across any community anywhere where people collectively believe these candidates actually have a chance. People who consume crazy media can believe crazy things, that's why MAGA is a thing, but there's a whole Fox News etc media machine feeding those people. Is there a forum somewhere with more than ten people where there's a consensus that a third-party candidate might actually win? None of the third party voters I have known or met irl believed this, and I would be shocked if they're all weird exceptions.
Like, please, where are these people congregating to spread the ludicrous idea that a third-party candidate can win a national election? Looking on the recent green party posts on their subreddits, the only thing I see even close is a thread with a headline about "candidates are electable if people vote for them", where the furthest they go in the comments is a few people talking about how big a deal it would be for the party if they got 5% nationally, and a couple other people replying to say the greens won't even get 1% this year but the election is still very important because of some nonsense about incremental gains.
It feels like we've imagined a brainwashing machine that does not exist in reality, rather than admit to the existence of protest votes. Condemning protest votes means condemning protest nonvotes equally, and we'll never have sufficient information about protest nonvoters to reasonably make a claim about how they would have voted. That would severely muddy any attempts to assign blame for election results.
If you're trying to convince these voters to act differently, the way to do that would be to address the arguments they're actually making, like the incremental gains nonsense. If you're addressing arguments they haven't been making at all, then it's worth asking whether you're trying to convince someone other than them.
- Nonvoters suck too.
- It's about sending a message: "I care enoug to vote, but both of you are shit" in the hope that in the next election cycle the candidates are less shit.
- Most elections I’m all for third party candidates in the hope that we’ll get one that can make a difference. We have had third parties on the national ballot and we’ve certainly had third parties influence the national debate even without getting a seat.
  However the last few elections are different - Trump is so destructive to our democratic institutions, our national identity, any hope of caring for our own people or others. I still don’t see how he is a viable candidate or how any sane person will vote for him. But he is there and it’s a valid point that a third party can be a spoiler. In this case we have a party/candidate who is to the left of the Democrats, pulling enough votes to be a spoiler: your vote to be farther left could very well lead us into a nationalist tyranny, and assuming history repeats abuses of constitutional authority over the law, abuses of multiple scapegoated groups, historical levels of corruption, increased global warming, global chaos. None of us can afford this and while we appreciate your attempt to pull to the left, it could send us over the deep end to the far right
  
  We have seen exactly zero indications that the republicans might start nominating better candidates anytime soon. The next candidate will probably be "Trump, but less incompetent at implementing his agenda". It makes sense to want to stall as long as possible, but needing a democrat victory every single election from here out is not going to be a winning strategy longterm. If Trump winning is guaranteed global chaos, then there aren't votes we can cast that will do anything other than slightly delay that.
- Non-voters are idiots but ultimately they will not vote. You can't lead a donkey to water
  People who vote third party actively get up in the morning to piss away their votes. It's like leading a donkey to water and they decide to eat sand instead.
  
  You've never heard of a "get out the vote" campaign? I can't imagine thinking that you can't possibly convince someone to vote.
  
  Non-voters are idiots but ultimately they will not vote. You can’t lead a donkey to water
  I don't understand what you're trying to suggest here. Taking it at face value doesn't make any sense at all - in spite of massively outnumbering third-party voters, the potential impact of non-voters should be dismissed because they are all somehow incapable of being convinced that voting is worth their time? Casting a ballot is a difficult mental hurdle to clear, so it's reasonable to write off anyone who has not yet shown that they're capable of doing so as a hopeless case?
  If the argument is that third party voters are throwing their votes away, why should we consider a protest vote to be different in any meaningful way from a protest non-vote?

America's system is a problem.
- Yeah no shit. But 2 weeks from the election isn't the time to try to fix it.
  
  Its the only time to fix it

People get weird close to the election.
People voting green party did so for a reason. Not everyone fits into perfectly shaped boxes for the 2 party system. Many vote 3rd party for leverage for policy change. The narrative of picking the lesser evil doesn't always apply to the narrative of the individual voter.
- We are literally vote in a Hitler figure who is going to build concentration camps and wreck the country or stick with sanity. The lesser of two evils is necessary until the second major party stops running Hitler.
  
  If Trump is Hitler, what is Kamala? At least third parties entertain ending wars
- Did people who voted for Stein get what they wanted by electing Trump?
  
  No, they got what they wanted by bringing third party candidates to the discussion table so more people would vote third party in future elections.
  One day we might even be able to elect a candidate who isn't the "lesser evil"
  
  They did manage that the democrats will never run with hilary again -> If both choices in the current election are shit you can at least try to influence the next one.
  Also fuck 'muricas election system. Everything resulting in a 2 Party system is no real democracy.
  
  Did Democrats get what they wanted by running Clinton?

So early voting has started in some states. Get out and vote people

A broken system gives you broken candidates.

That makes an assumption that all or a big majority third party voters would prefer Harris over Trump.
Just for clarifying the logic here.
- Yes. If Greens tend to the Left, the last thing they should want is right extremists
- Nobody who would have otherwise voted for Trump is going to be convinced to vote for Stein. Every vote she gets IS one that was much more aligned with Harris.
  This isn't a question of ALL third parties, but there aren't any right-aligned third parties making any kind of a meaningful run.
  
  What??
  In Michigan Gary Johnson got 172,136 votes, in Pennsylvania he got 146,715, and in Wisconsin he got 106,674. If all Greens voted Clinton and all Libertarians voted Trump then New Mexico would've only been won by Clinton with around 1,000 votes, Colorado would've also been nearly Trump. Nevada, New Hampshire, and Minnesota would've been won by Trump. Maine might've gone majority Trump.
  Third parties hurt Trump more than they help him, because Libertarians would not have voted Clinton.

Democrats who are actually concerned about Republicans should be pushing hard for ranked choice voting.
These memes make Democrats feel good, but only annoys third party voters.
- Considering Lemmy's market share, these memes only exist to harass third party voters.
  As if Lemmy, which has a small userspace spread out over the world, can influence the election. Yet, here we are with a overly active Democrat and Israeli brigade making sure dissenting opinions cannot exist.
- But, if the goal isn't necessarily to win the election, only to absolve yourself of blame if you lose the election, then blaming 3rd party voters is the stance for you.
  Could it be a poor political platform, or just not even campaigning in the state? Maybe it's just not being appealing enough to the 40% of the electorate that doesn't vote. Couldn't be.
  I feel like all the hate for 3rd parties is the same as the hate for immigrants. It's all redirection and obfuscation.

I'm going to dress up as third party voting for Halloween
- Don't you think clowns are a little overdone?
  
  Well apparently they still scare irrational people.

These numbers are ~~not~~ correct according to NY Times
Edit: I can’t math
- I double checked the subtraction with the NYT numbers you linked to, and the numbers look correct to me. Which numbers are wrong?
  
  I can’t math and I think I looked at the wrong state for Michigan
  
  I think maybe he means numbers themselves are wrong? I mean look at 7. That number is just all kinds of fucked up. Don't get me started on 23.

G.R.E.E.N.
GET
REPUBLICANS
ELECTED
EVERY
NOVEMBER

Most people that vote third party wouldn't vote otherwise. Assuming that every vote for Jill Stein would've gone to Hillary is quite the assumption. I always vote third party, so assuming my current vote for Jill Stein would've gone towards Harris instead is just dumb and wrong.
- Sure when people think third party they usually mean “No, more fascist”
  
  Is this the democracy Trump is threatening? One where you're berated for not doing the duty of voting for a candidate you hate and next time they'll get an even worse one? Where voting for the candidate you actually want is treated as sabotage?
  The GOP gives their base the candidate they want, if the democrats don't, thats their own goddamn problem and those who vote blue no matter who should think about the responsibility they bear in making their own party the fascist lite option.

I don't know if you've noticed this about Stein voters, but they're very unlikely to switch their vote from Stein to Harris. If anything, there would suddenly be an unexplainable surge in write-in votes for Putin.
- You fundamentally misunderstand the people you speak authoritatively about. Please remember that voters and supportive posters on the internet are not the same thing. I agree that Green Party voters (actual human citizens, not bots and trolls online) are woefully misguided but they are not trumpets by any stretch. Have you talked to any of them in person?
  
  Ok champ. 👍

North America’s electoral systems are so broken. It’s painful to see so much negativity, frustration, and fear directed at third parties in general. If that same energy was directed towards building a ranked choice voting system with proportional representation, like single transferable voting (STV), the duopolies would crumble and we could all actually vote for whoever we want without having to worry we might end up with the worst candidate winning.
- That's great. I Agree.
  We got four more years to do that, if Trump doesn't win.
  We've had tons of time to change voting systems.
  All the third parties couldve banded together to get it done. Ya know. With all their existing seats of power in federal, state, and local government.
  Oh wait.
  Hint. Hint.
  A third party would be worthless if it won federal office right now. It would be roadblocked every step of the way.
  I agree that our voting system needs an overhaul. But don't try to do it by electing a third party president. It'll never work, and if it did, they would be falling flat on their face for four more years and paint a terrible picture for the future of all third parties.
  A protest vote means absolutely nothing, except that it helps the least-aligned primary party power. You are bolstering your opponent to do so. Literally cutting off your nose to spite your face.
  
  It doesn’t need to start with the federal level. There’s a growing amount of states that have already adopted some form of ranked choice voting and some of those have also adopted a proportional variant. Progress is being made in some places at lower levels, but it’s slow. Other states have banned it unfortunately.

Never forget that in 2016 13% of Trump voters voted for Obama in 2008/12. Maybe the Democratic Party can share some blame, instead of just shaming the voters.
- Blaming Trump voters for electing Trump? Unheard of!

Dont let online bullies influence your vote. Each citizen gets one vote, cast it for whom you wish to support. Learn about the issues, the policies being proposed, and cast your vote for whomever you support.
- REEEEEEEEE how dare you vote any other way than what I PERSONALLY WANT? Have you thought about asking me first??
- *as long as you support one of the major 2 parties
  
  The GOP and the democrats are two arms of the same corporate party. Fuck them.

Isn't Al Gore vs Bush an even better example?
- If you ignore Katherine Harris and the Brooks Brothers Rioters shutting down the recount
  Gore was slatted to win Florida until the SCOTUS ruled to end the recount and hand the election to Bush.
  
  It is, however, interesting that the center folding and letting the right trample them is casually being present as the fault of the left. I sure hope it's not a preview of the next month or 48.

Jill Stien only had 2% of the vote in 2016. That is nothing. Most of those people would have stayed home. The reason Hillary lost was because she was a bad canidiate who was unable to resonate with young voters.
- She acted like she was entitled to the job. Anytime she spoke, it felt like she was holding her nose to do it. She was riddled by controversy for decades (deserved or not).
  She was just such a bad choice and probably one of the few people who could have lost to Trump.
  
  Facts

Can we get a nsfw tag? That twat's neckgina is making me sick.
- Eugh thanks 😬

Every one so excited to back the lesser of two evils and wondering why things are the way they are

Maybe if everyone that posted threads like this voted 3rd party, maybe 3rd party would get enough votes for once to push a reelection and get on the radar? Instead of trying to get people to vote for 2 candidates that don't support their needs and/or wants.
You do realize that the winning president has to win at least 50% of the electoral college vote in order to win. If no one president does then the top 3 candidates go to the house of representatives to be chosen. Just the media if this happened would finally put a third party on the radar, even if they only won one state.
https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/faq
- That’s the spirit. Dream big!
  
  I remember how this was totally going to happen with Jill Stein multiple times. And also Gary Johnson. And Ralph Nader. And H. Ross Perot (18.9% of the vote and still no electoral votes) and probably Harold Stassen too.

I'll never forget what third party voting gets us; additional fucking choices beyond the dominant two-party system, encouraging broader participation. When a Republican or Democrat candidate loses any race, it's common to see them use third party candidates as a scapegoat.
- Except it doesn’t. Not in presidentials anyway.
  
  Hey, just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't.
  a terrible gambler
  
  Do you vote separately for your president in the US?
  In Germany we vote for Parliament, whoever receives a majority of votes then gets the governmental mandate and their candidate becomes chancellor. Many people thought there never would be any other chancellor than from either the "social" democrats (SPD) or "christian" conservatives (CDU/CSU, also just called "Union"), until 2021 when the Green Party got so good in surveys we suddenly had three official candidates.
  I do know about the "electorial college" nonsense, just asking what exactly the votes are aimed to be for, government or specifically the president.
- Ahh the illusion of choice. You vote third party and get another Trump presidency, but hey at least you got your morals, eh?
- If you understand that the Constitution specifies “most votes” win the presidency, and you understand the Slaver’s College, and you understand a third party doesn’t exist yet that can accomplish those things, so that you understand you’re deliberately throwing a vote against a demented fascist rapist away then - okay.
  That’s unfortunate.

Jill Stein is a fascist bitch.
- How is she a fascist? I've seen the two big party candidates run on more fascist policies than her, so I'd be genuinely surprised to see how she could be worse.
  EDIT: People downvoting but giving me zero arguments
  
  You are right. The people who are saying that Jill Stein is a fascist clearly know nothing about her or her platform.

I remember 2020 where Trump did not win. All problems are fixed now.
- No more children in cag- uhh I mean no more war in the middle- ah fuck surely no more fracking at least??
- Would you rather he did?

Me looking at the current state of our democracy and political system. 🤷
- Electing a felon certainly can't make it worse. It is not like he is fantasizing about deploying the national guard against his own citizens.... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/17/donald-trump-enemy-within-quote/75714201007/

Then maybe Kamala should stop glazing Israel's d. so much and actually do something to win back michigan muslims. They'll either vote third party or won't vote at all. The trumpists will vote Trump anyway. This post is purely delusional if you think you'll win some voting groups back just by dragging third party candidates through the mud. Especially voting groups so deeply involved in some issues that your beloved candidate clearly doesn't care about at all.

over 130 million votes wasted in 2016. We are fucked.

Picture a situation where various political parties vie to unseat the Republicans. With more representative electoral systems, voters could select their preferred candidates, while still counting their vote against the Republican party even if their choice doesn’t win, all without the spoiler effect. Since voting methods are set at the state level, we don’t need to wait for federal reforms; some states have already enacted electoral changes. For instance, Alaska recently chose a more moderate conservative over Sarah Palin due to Ranked Choice voting.
Who would oppose having multiple opportunities to diminish Republican power? The Democratic Party would. In blue states, they could replace First Past The Post voting with a system that eliminates the spoiler effect. Yet, year after year, election after election, Democrats remain inactive on passing state level electoral reform in the states they control.
Republicans are moving to protect FPTP voting in red states. Why do the democrats want to use the voting system republicans prefer?
Its not that democrats dont know about the flaws in the voting system either. Just mention voting for a third party to any Democrat, and they’ll readily acknowledge the weaknesses of the voting system. Comments about the Green Party here will further illustrate their understanding of this issue.
If democrats understanding the problem, yet refuse to fix it, can only mean one thing. The Democrats prefer the country balancing over a fire pit of fascism rather than truly competing for our votes. They would rather this country be lost to authoritarianism then to play on a even playing field.
Party over country at all costs.
- I agree with everything you've said except that the folks here upset at seeing third party votes help Trump win are NOT the same people refusing to fix the FPTP problem.

Maybe the Democratic party should consider what not following through on their campaign promises gets them. I don't how their failure to realize their promises to their voters is the fault of people voting for third parties
- Username checks out?

Don't mind me, just sweeping þrough to prune ð propoganda weeds on ðeir latest block/ban dodge accounts!

There you go again. Blame third parties for your own failure. Keep doing it, tell yourself it's true.

Agreed. Hopefully Democrats put more effort into earning their votes.

Evidence that third party votes would of voted otherwise? If people don't like any candidates, they might not vote at all
- Or, they might vote Republican. In 2016, Clinton was na clear establishment candidate and Trump was a (fake) populist. Voters who went Green or Libertarian as a vote against the establishment were unlikely to swing to Hillary.
  I'm not sure that dynamic still holds now. The MAGA faithful think Trump is a populist, but I don't think anyone else does.

The numbers in this image aren't real.
Also, why would you assume that those people voting for Stein would have preferred Clinton over Trump?
- Those totals match the wikipedia article exactly, so if they’re wrong, please update them.
  I assumed Stein voters were stupid and/or reckless but not evil. Perhaps you’re right though.
- Why would someone who agrees with the Green Party platform prefer Republicans to Democrats? I'm sure such people exist, but I expect they're a tiny fraction of Green Party voters.
  
  People who are normally socially and economically conservative (which may in part be due to far-right propaganda news outlets) but also differ in significant ways from mainstream western conservative politics, and they are much more opposed to the genocide than they are supportable of those socioeconomic values. Not so relevant in 2016, a lot more relevant right now. There's probably more of them than you think.

Voting democrat or republican gets you a divided republic. The repercussions or their actions are about to reverberate through society. I fucking warned you.

If you don’t like stein, consider voting party for socialism and liberation instead.
They’re running Claudia de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to israel.
I found out recently that they’re on the ballot or have official write in status in 42 states, so unless you’re in Alaska, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Georgia or Pennsylvania go for it!
E: forgot Nevada. They’re not officially recognized in Nevada.
- I’d advise that no one buy into any of this nonsense. De la Cruz has a mathematically impossible chance to win, and at this point will serve only to siphon votes and spoil the election. Knowingly or not, this is what is happening.
  Think about it: Ever wonder why you’re really only hearing about them recently? Where were they four years ago? What have they done to prove they will even do as they say? They have no track record to stand on, but for some reason, these people seem to think they can sneak into an election and have a chance to win on unproven, untested policy with no practical or effective way to make any of it happen?
  Make no mistake- there is no good intention from anyone asking you to throw away your vote on these people this late in the game- NONE.
  Were it a year or two ago, I could maybe see it. But weeks away from what might be the most important election of our lifetime- to even think to request people not do everything they can to stop a racist rapist traitor to America from forcing our own militarily against us, systematically removing the rights of our LGBTQ+ friends and family, and the rights of women to have body autonomy is as shamelessly in bad faith as one could possibly be.
  DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE.
  
  I might be misremembering the electoral values of the states here, but I think the combined value of the states they’re not official write ins or on ballot is only 64.
  That leaves 474 electoral votes that psl could get, so they very much could win.
  The history of the party is easy to find. They’ve been around for a little while now.
  I’d choose a party with no track record over one with a consistent track record of genocidal violence and extrajudicial killings, but luckily psl has a track record of grassroots activism that’s pretty consistent, so I don’t have to take a gamble.
  It’s a bit absurd to call opposition to genocide and apartheid unproven, untested policy.
  I’m swiftly climbing the ladder of age and my whole life people have been saying “well, you should have been advocating for this or that last year, it’s too late now, this is the most important election of our lifetime!”
  The best time to vote (and do groundwork for) psl was last year, the second best time is now!
  I agree with the last part though, don’t listen to people peddling tired cliches and misinformation trying to manipulate you into voting one way or the other!
- Are they running anyone in elections they might actually win? I might vote for a party like that for mayor or something. But I wouldn't even vote for them for state house representative unless they were well known enough in my state that they might actually win.
  'Third' parties in this country can show themselves as serious if they try to establish themselves from the bottom up. If all they do is run for president and occasionally Senate or House, then they show themselves as unserious parties which are probably nothing more than attempts to siphon votes that might have gone to a real candidate.
  
  I don’t know odds, I’m not much of a gambler. You gotta start somewhere though and winning isn’t all that matters: at the presidential level losing parties’ turnout determines their ballot access, event presence, access to funds and media and obviously how much you hear about them.
  At the state and local levels there are Byzantine other benefits to having some percentage of the vote that vary wildly from place to place.
  So its worth it to vote for a small candidate even if they lose because it can have big effects down the road.
  Psl runs candidates at lots of local races, especially in California because that’s where they started.
  Of course, if your main worry is having voted for a candidate that can win: good news! Psl can win every race it has a candidate in as far as I know. People were saying that they didn’t have enough ballot presence to tip the electoral college but they were wrong!

Yes it's the fault of people who voted for a third party. Not the people who didn't vote. Not Trump. Not Clinton. It's the people who voted for a third party candidate.
The duopoly got us here. Third party or bust.
- Those whose preferred ordering of candidates was third party clinton Trump contributed to the outcome they did not want with zero chance now, in the last 100 years or in the next 100 years ever electing a third party.
- You know, your right. At first I was thinking that blaming Trump voters is like blaming stupid people for being stupid. But then I thought at least the trump voters have a shot at getting Trump elected. The 3rd party voters don't have a shot at getting their candidates elected. So 3rd party voters are even dumber than Trump voters. So you really are just too dumb to blame.
  
  You know, your right
  yes, I know my rights
  
  The 3rd party voters don’t have a shot at getting their candidates elected. So 3rd party voters are even dumber than Trump voters.
  The 3rd party voters aren't trying to get their candidate elected. They're trying to raise awareness for third parties so more people support them. Eventually they'll get some candidates into the Senate, onto the debate stage, and can slowly pick up steam from there.
  What I'm saying is you're actually correct to a certain degree - the 3rd party voters who are voting because they actually believe their candidate will win are probably dumber than Trump voters. But that's not the point of voting 3rd party (at least not yet)

Almost like Clinton should have run a real campaign in MI😃. Stop running unpopular candidates and blaming it on greens. How embarassing lol.
- It's possible more than one thing contributed to Clinton losing...
  At any rate Harris is running a great campaign. So much so that every single potential voter is being considered, even the people that might be getting scammed into voting for Jill Stein. I don't think the Hilary's campaign even considered going after the people voting green because it was assumed those votes wouldn't be a significant factor. The Harris campaign isn't leaving any stone unturned. That means challenging people who are promoting third parties more.
  
  Harris has declined in popularity with every day that passed after her coronation. She is running a mostly adequate campaign, and trying to please everyone has never been a seriously effective Democratic strategy, especially in the long term.
  Harris has her strengths. Very few Democrats would have stood their ground as well as she did in the Fox ambush interview. That's where she really shines, when she can let out that inner prosecutor. Waltz was a great addition, but the campaign hid him away the second Harris took on most of Hillary's campaign advisors.
  Just like Biden before her, Harris's greatest advantage is how much Trump is despised outside of his cult. Let's not be deifying her for that.
- Yeah how dare ð dems pick ð candidate ð majority of ðeir primary voters picked! Ðey should have chosen someone more popular, like ð guy who got even less votes ðan her during ðose same primaries!

Always remember it's like fantasy football 🏈!
Yeah! I'm voting Harris! Yeah!
If she wins.... meaning that the actual electors from the unelected body called the electoral college, actually vote for her and she gets to win.... Then I would have picked the correct option! It's just like the Lotto! In election day you mark you Lotto ticket, then you wait for the election to be called..... meanwhile in the Lotto, they spin a wheel full of carefully balanced balls. They, the electoral college, pick the balls and show you the list of balls... Then you check your ticket and if you elected what they elected, then you won! You won! I can't believe it! I can't believe it because the electors can choose whoever they want! Yey! Democracy!
- It's less fantasy football and more trying to prevent a genocidal dictator from taking power.
  
  Yes but like this....think of a letter between A) and B)!
  Pick A for Trump or B for Harris!
  If you picked B! Guess what????? We'll let's wait and see what happens 😉. Hopeful they pick B to! I hope the people who do actually get to actually vote for our president, pick a good president to be our non king leader who we actually pick ..for realz.
  In the meantime, I just got my ballot a few days ago in the mail and I'll vote B too. Hopefully I win too. But I'll have to wait until the electoral college picks our president too. Yey! Democracy!

To convince Greens or Carlins (people who don't vote because the Democrats are still too evil from their point-of-view) to vote for Democrats, you need to understand yourself and them. Once you do that, you'll be able to offer more convincing arguments to support your position.
If you're voting for Democrats, you possibly agree with the following scale of evilness:
10 Hitler
9 Stalin
8.5 Trump
8 Republicans and people who vote for them
7
6
~5-3 elected Democratic party members
2
1 you
0 Jesus
The thing is that some Greens see the world very differently:
10 people making the biosphere unlivable thru overpopulation
9 factory farmers and commercial fishing companies
8
7 Hitler, Stalin
6
5 George W. Bush, Putin
4 Trump, Republicans, and people who vote for them
3 Gore, Obama, Democrats, and people who vote for them
2
1 Sanders
0
-1
-2
-3
-4 Green party
-5
-6
-7 them
-8
-9
-10
The Greens' (and Carlins') priorities are very different. They may think that choosing to make the biosphere unlivable is the worst thing you can do, because without a biosphere that supports life, nothing else matters.
As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. […] The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/
They may think that torturing trillions of fish to death every year, and enslaving hundreds of billions of animals in torturous conditions every year, is worse than all genocides and wars in all of history combined. They think that voting for someone who enables even a single genocide is a line they won't cross.
They may think that given the choice between popular Hitler, popular Stalin, and unpopular Gandhi; they'd rather vote for Gandhi than the popular lesser evil, because that specific evil is omnicidally evil. That it's better to vote for good and fail, than it is to vote for evil and succeed.
- Yeah its hard for people to grasp that people have different values than them.

It's Jill Stein's fault the dems ran Hillary, it was all her master plan all along. She's also the one who did whatever the email shit was that people screamed about for 6 years. She must be stopped before she makes the administration do something crazy like supporting genocide
- Stein can run AND you can be a dolt for voting for her AND we legally permit you to vote like a dingus, but (also legally) you go on a vote tally and we know how many dolts there were and we get to mock you as a small comeuppance for your ruination of everyone else’s attempt to improve our daily lives and those around us.
  Not to suggest that we get to mock you specifically! Because we protect everyone in that way. SO FAR. But you’ll know who we’re mocking. Because we protect that, too.
  SO FAR.
  Hope that helps you make a better comment next time.
  
  your ruination of everyone else’s attempt to improve our daily lives and those around us
  The absolute anger at people who didn't vote for the shitty guy instead of those who did is goddamn sad. To blame third party voters at all for 2016 is heavy copium of some seriously pathetic levels
  Hope that helps you make a better comment next time.
  and so smugly full of themselves in a weirdly threatening way, because voting only counts if you vote exactly how they want you to

Move right to appeal to Republicans
They don't vote for you, lose anyway
Noooooo this is all Jill's fault.
- Your username says Seattle but your political views are more rural Washington.
  
  I live there- and trust me when I say, I get second-hand embarrassment on behalf of this city from reading their rhetoric . Seattle is a lovely and very politically literate city and in no way is represented by their… ideology.
  
  I'm actually voting for Jill who might as well be a Lenin for how far right Harris is.
- https://www.nj.com/politics/2024/10/harris-vs-trump-spoiler-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud.html
  We are not in a position to win the White House, but we do have a real opportunity to win something historic, we could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan.”
  
  Former Seattle City Council member and prominent Indian-American political activist Kshama Sawant made that clear at a recent event.
  The irony, right?

This proves that left leaning holdouts have real leverage. The Dems need us to win and if they want our votes they have to appeal to our values.
- I guess...
  Alternatively, left leaning holdouts for some reason really like to punch themselves and all their friends and family in the nuts and are a real wanker class.
  Edit: At least 11 people are giant fuckin wankers
  
  left leaning holdouts for some reason really like to punch themselves and all their friends and family in the nuts
  My brother is voting for Jill Stein because Biden (and by association Harris) supposedly supports genocide - but he thinks Putin is a good person (and has recently started talking about how great China is) and waves his hand when I mention that Trump would support Netanyahu even more. Your "for some reason" resonates with me because I have no fucking idea what happened to my brother to make him start saying this kind of nonsense - except that I know he stopped reading books and now gets his news entirely from his Facebook feed.
  
  Supporting genocide crosses a line for me that I am unwilling to compromise on. If that makes me a wanker I'll call myself a wanker proudly.

The Green Party thanks Lemmy for all the publicity it has brought to the Jill Stein campaign

I love how entitled to peoples votes the democrats are.
- Voting third party in a first past the post voting system ensures you get the candidate you want the least.
  Third party is not a solution to a two party system but it does disproportionately affect democratic votes who want change and don't blindly vote. That's why it's often with Republican interests that these 3rd parties are funded in the first place.
  
  Without third parties Republicans would win more
  
  Understandable. I'm not arguing about the technicalities of third parties in the first past voting system. You are 100% correct.
  I just don't like the entitlement. I also don't like the green party cause I only hear about and of them once every 4 years for the elections. I'm simply stating how annoying and frustrating it is to see Democrats court more centrists and trad republicans than to their core base who they take for granted in a "who else you gonna vote for removed" kinda attitude.
  
  Long term, its a solution to neither candidate supporting your values. It shows that you wont blindly support whoever is barely less bad. If your vote counts at all (which it pretty much doesbt) then you cant tell people not to vote for whoever is closest to their values. You should be telling the candidate to listen to their voters.
- Thank you for revealing what you are so I can block you
  
  Block me as well blue conservative.
  
  you dont feel they are?
- "Im going to be barely better than the alternative and people will literally worship me for it. Also even though i support killing children, trump would kill more probably. Vote blue!"
  Disclaimer because lemmy users are becoming more like redditors everyday:
  yes trump sucks. Yes vote kamala if youre in a swing state. No, dont attack every person who points out the massive flaws in your democratic system or the "democrat" party. Because they fucking suck also. Just slightly less.
  
  "And we won't even support you federally and protect your rights .. Vote blue!!"
  (Completely agree with your disclaimer)

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