"No, I'm not doing nothing I'm raising awareness!"
"No, I'm not doing nothing I'm raising awareness!"
505 comments
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I’m not even convinced it’s even real leftists posting this stuff. It often seems like astroturfing. Not only would fake leftists possibly sway undecided voters, but they also tarnish any positivity the left deserves. Win-win for the right.
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I'd like to think you're right.
But I have heard borderline stuff like this in real life from people whom I know are solid progressives. (Admittedly, these are folks on my soccer team who are almost 2 decades younger than me. I can't imagine what ending their teens during a pandemic was like so I kind of expect their politics to be wildly different.)
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"Borderline" is entirely different. Voting for Harris while being salty about it is a perfectly reasonable thing real progressives should do, and it's exactly the opposite of what these astroturf third-party propagandists are calling for even if the (alleged) sentiment is adjacent. That "border" is a knife edge and the difference between a genuine progressive and a[n effectively] pro-Trump useful idiot comes down to which side of it they fall off.
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I'm a real leftist who is not voting this US election
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Hang around them long enough. They will slip. They inevitably use right wing colloquialisms.
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Dealt with someone ostensibly from the UK advocating for not voting and after being pressed repeatedly finally worked their way down to “I’m not voting because I can’t”.
Actual foreign election interference, and the UK has some notable Russian ties. Wouldn’t be surprised if that rube has ties to Russia or is actually on a ruble payroll
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Ha, I know exactly who you're referring to!
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I was shocked to find out I have a friend I thought was intelligent suggest I withhold my vote for Kamala. Fuck you, dude.
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It's all the fault of the Democrats. If they had run Bernie he would have been voted in and we wouldn't be here.
The fact that Bernie endorses Harris is meaningless, because he's not a real Socialist.
Things I've heard today on Lemm.ee
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Ahaha, you had me terrified for a sec there.
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Who on .ee are you seeing comments like this from?
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I've never seen a fellow .ee like this. Curious to hear what communities it's on
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To be fair, Bernie would have won in 2016, and I do blame Clinton for Trump winning in the first place.
Didn’t stop me from voting for Harris though in an actually important election. Just glad it’s not Hillary i’m having to hold my nose over.
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Biden got more votes in primaries than all the other candidates combined. That's kind of how popularity works.
People on the internet like to pretend that US has more progressives than it has, but all the statistics show that even the most popular progressive candidate can't get enough support to win primaries, so chances of him winning the general election were even more slim.
Unless that will change, best we can hope for is a competent centrist. -
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I’ve had people telling me that I have “blood on [my] hands” because I’m voting for Harris. It’s insane. These people have no fucking concept.
If Harris wins, it will be by razor-thin margin. If she loses, trump wins. If trump wins, the genocide will get cranked up to 11. So voting 3rd party means even MORE “blood on my hands” than a Harris vote.
At least with Harris, there’s a CHANCE she can be reasoned with and stop the bloodshed.
These “Harris = genocide” people are liars, just trying to get trump elected - to sabotage this country.
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There is a world where abstaining could be a reasonable approach. That world probably disappeared before I was born.
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Even if that 1 to 10 scale was in magnitudes (10^n), 11 would still be an understatement for what Donald Dump would encourage Israel and Russia to do.
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It sounds like it’s young people (under 25) who don’t understand exactly how bad it will be if trump wins.
I’ve survived a lot of shit presidents. Trump is the first one who actually scares me.
Hopefully they will do the right thing when it comes time to actually vote.
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Even Dick "I did 911" Cheney is against him. He's an actual evil person who thinks Trump is too evil
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W was actually worse than trump's first term.
But that's only because W had far more competent people, it's like how Germany was severely handicapped in the war by Hitler always getting in the damn way.
This time I suspect he'd have better minions.
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The time to actually vote is now. I voted a week ago.
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Are these Schrodinger's young people who simultaneously don't vote, but also single-handedly tip the entire election?
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If anything, lefties shouldn't be a single issue voter at all. They should be picking someone who might move toward that direction and have the chance to win, not abstaining.
As the famous word goes: Evil triumph when good men do nothing. You can't abstain or do protest vote and expect anything to change under Trump, that single issue you hold so important will get worst, or even impossible.
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Jay Shapiro explains this well in a video:
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Well this "single issue" of land stealing, white supremacist subjugation of a people on their native land, ethnic cleansing and genocide, has only gotten worse with every election.
If we look at AIPAC they arent powerful because they influence who wins. They are powerful because they onfluence who looses.
That is why being pro genocide remains a staple of both parties policies. The only way to change that, is to punish the side that claims to not be pro genocide generally, so it has to become against genocide specifically.
And we had one year of trying to do that before the election, where people here and in othernplace vigorously defended being pro genocide, as challenging that before the election would be bad for the election.
We saw with Biden stepping down that challenging the dementia candidate was actually beneficial for the Democrats election chances, despite the same denial and backlash over pointing out Bidens failing mental capacities.
Now i am sure that these sentiments of immediately attacking people who wanted the Democrats to become a non genocide party when it was still possible to achieve that for the election, were stirred by AIPAC and other establishment actors, who would rather have Trump win than end genocide or get to meaningful progressive politics like proper healthcare and workers rights.
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Okay, sure, but let's say Trump win and you successfully punish Democrats, the results are...you also punished abortion right, people of colour, the lgbtq community, american with middle-eastern origin, worsening the immigrant deportation, and lastly, eliminating the chance of palestine-israel ceasefire and basically confirming the annexation of Gaza and West Bank. Isn't that the thing you most concerned with? And now the blood is on your hands too. That doesn't sounds like left-wing thinking to me at all.
I leave out a lot of thing, it's really up to you to figure out what you will lose. I'm not even from US and another Trump term will undoubtedly affect the world in one way or another.
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Most of what you say is exactly correct. The thing is, you have drawn a little outline of a box around this one situation, and allowed its glow to obscure all else outside the line.
Make the box bigger. Let the other issues that still count and effect people be inside the box.
Trans people need you to vote Harris, because they'll be in extermination camps under Trump. Women in Mississippi whose pregnancies are going to tragically go bad next year need you to save their lives by voting Harris, because Trump will put the final nail in the coffin on abortion. Plenty of people will go homeless under Trump who would have hung on with higher wages and monopoly busting under Harris.
Being a single issue voter is a luxury that assumes everything else is basically solid, so we can press the one issue extra hard and let the rest of the garden tend itself a bit.
We are in the exact opposite of that situation in the 2024 presidential election. Dont confuse the shittiness of the whole situation with relatively much much better choice of Harris over Trump.
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So women needlessly dying of miscarriages and trans people getting locked up in camps is fine so long as the democrats are punished.
Mass deportations with sketchy legal grounds are also fine because the democrats will totally learn their lesson this time.
Wake the hell up. You’re only punishing innocent americans. The democrats will be FINE if trump wins.
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But Palestine hurr Durr
You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine's there's gonna be if he gets in? You can kiss Ukraine goodbye, and probably hong kong too. This is nothing.
2016-2020 was the beta test. If this goes into production we're all fucked.
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I echo the sentiment (regarding Trump being a much, much worse outcome), but you can already "Kiss Hong Kong goodbye". It's part of China, they have cracked down, and the two systems has been reduced to like 1.5 systems ahead of schedule.
I am genuinely curious what you think either presidential candidate would do about this, considering they will continue to espouse the One China policy. Where they might differ is in their support of Taiwan, whose status is much more murky.
Hong Kong though? Pretty sure that ship sailed once the UN decided: no Empire no longer, and the 99 year lease came to an end.
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I cringe every time I see this come up.
Because it isn't what you actually mean, and the horrible logic of it makes it easy for the Lemmy Lefties to dunk on.
Of course a 3rd party vote isn't a vote for Trump any more than it is a vote for Kamala.
What it actually is is a discarded opportunity to vote against Trump. Which is also dispicable, but actually accurate.
Everyone knows that's what you mean by this, but the Lemmy Lefties will play dumb and latch onto that logical fallacy every time.
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It's the trolley problem again. This time, you have 3 tracks and 2 switches. The trolley is headed towards 5 people, one switch sends it to 1 person, and the other switch would send it to 0 people, but it's broken. Voting third party is pulling the broken switch, knowing the 5 people will die but you've shifted the responsibility from yourself to whoever was supposed to fix the switch.
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I like your analogy. Let me expand.
This same situation happens every day. For years now, 1 person has died every day. Nobody pulls the broken lever, but if people started pulling it, it would start working. For the first couple days or weeks, 5 people would die each time, but eventually we would be able to get the train on a safe track.
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I really like your take on this. So how is the switch going to get fixed, when the only time anyone pays attention to the fact that it's broken, is when lives are on the line?
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If nobody votes 3rd party then we'll never have a 3rd party candidate that matters.
It's like bicycle infrastructure. Nobody wants to ride bikes on a highway, but you won't see bike riders until there's a trail somewhere for them to ride on. You can say it never matters and that there aren't any cyclists out there, but you're wrong. I think there's a lot of Americans looking for another party right now.
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Under FPTP, we'll never have a 3rd party candidate that matters.
The 2-party system is a direct, mathematical result of FPTP + time.
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Not everyone lives in a swing state where votes actually matter.
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Do you know what will definitely NOT help get rid of the electoral college? People wasting their votes on 3rd party spoilers
Do you know what would MORE LIKELY move people to demand the elimination of the electoral college? Harris getting 10 million+ more votes, and Trump either winning the electoral college or attempting a coup based on lies because a swing state was close.
The more votes Harris gets, the clearer the will of the people, the harder it is to pretend there was voter fraud.
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I think we have the best chance to break the third party at the local level.
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You sure seem to have every excuse in the book, don’t you?
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No one is buying the bullshit you have for sale.
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The Dems are running on Trump's 2020 platform. Build the wall. Lock up immigrants. Both parties are far-right shitholes, and it's time people started realizing that.
The Dems in 2028 will be calling for mass deportations.
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^ This right here. Exactly my point. They are going to keep telling you Kamala and Trump are the same so you spoil your chance to prevent Trump from taking office again.
They are not subtle, and they do not care about the fallout of a Trump reelection. They are privileged enough that it won't affect them or their loved ones. It's despicable.
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Cringe
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This went so far past just being wrong that it might just end up creating an entirely new paradigm of stupidity.
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I voted for Obama, Clinton(at an empty polling place BTW), Biden, and will for Harris, all with no snap in my step and a funeral dirge in my heart, just so I can say I used what little power I have for harm reduction.
I'd rather not have fascist scapegoating along with our antisocial, rigged crony market capitalist economy we don't get a vote on sucking us dry as we struggle to subsist. We only get a vote on how to address the social issue symptoms of that economy, if at all, and who to blame, and sadly it's never the private shareholder class that should be.
Let's be clear , we're circling the drain. Inequality will continue to increase as greed induced climate change increases scarcity for the non wealthy masses, D or R, but at least with D, we won't arbitrarily point the finger at brown people and hit them with sticks. That's is the extent of our vote, whether to starve us or starve us while beating us.
We need a new constitution, one that punishes greed, with life imprisonment when applied to politics, and rewards prosocial activity. This country died under Reagan as anything more than a money printer for the tiny class of people that don't see you or as human, just resources to extract MOAR value from.
But since that won't happen, I'll do the right thing without hope in the face of Armageddon, harm reduction. A vote to leave the water pumps running on this sinking ship, nothing more.
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The concept that voting for a third-party candidate is somehow "helping" one of the major party candidates is based on the assumption that the third-party candidate's voters would have otherwise voted for one of the major party candidates.
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In vacuum I agree. In the US electoral system voting for a third party is almost the same not voting at all, so it really doesn't matter if you vote for third party or you vote for nobody. My issue is that in the context of America voting third party makes no sense, especially this election. By voting third party you don't care who gets elected and it makes no sense to me because who goes "I don't really care if fascists come into power and start oppressing women and foreigners". Who the fuck is indifferent to fascism? Apparently third party voters.
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No, it's based on the assumption that they can otherwise vote for one of the major party candidates, which is true.
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Yeah it seems some people don't pay attention to the rest of the world when it comes to trivial issues like politics, law, education and healthcare. In Australia we have two major parties, Labor and Liberal. Then the Greens who sway a lot of decisions one way. And the Nationals who go another way. Then a few more representing across the spectrum ideas. They're all still absolute dickheads but some are better than others and I think, looking outward, that it's working better than a two party solution.
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It should be noted that whenever examples are brought up of third-party viability, the voting system referenced is almost certainly not FPTP.
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Nope, not how it works. You don't need all of them to vote for one of the major parties. It's often only a fraction. Florida 2000 final tally was less than 600 votes difference between Bush and Gore. Less than 1% of Nader's own 97k votes would have needed to flip, and we'd be talking about a very different country right now.
This also applies to a few other states in 2000 that had close votes. Florida wasn't the only story there, and no, neither was the Supreme Court.
Binary thinking strikes again.
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I feel bad for Americans and kids in general. More fascist radicalization pipelines pop up every single day. The money and effort spent must rival most countries GDPs. Just the media organizations alone..
Some days it can feel like standing at the foot of a mountain watching the entire mountain side crashing down.
Then I realize it's just people. People we can step up to. And slap in the damn face.
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I live in a swing state, and a frightening number of my friends are refusing to vote or voting 3rd party. When pressed if they truly felt that there would be no difference in their lives or the world between Harris or Trump, they just double down on regurgitated excuses and bury their heads in the sand. I really don't get it.
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There's tons to say.
Well, not tons, but a solid-ass rebuttal.
Those states do matter. They only "don't matter" because everybody in them has historically done and is predicted to do a certain thing. If enough people learn of that prediction, become unmotivated, and don't do that thing anymore, then those states become swing states which could swing the other way. It's not guaranteed to always be the way it's been.
"Blue state" and "red state" aren't unchanging aspects of the geography, they're the actions of individuals as seen from an aerial view.
Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.
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Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.
And yet, this logic doesn't apply to unseating the existing parties, for some reason. If Illinois could eventually turn red, then it follows that it could eventually turn green. In either case, it's just a matter of "enough people" changing their behavior.
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Lol they're big mad about this one but it's true. Next they're gonna go blame the left in states that voted for Kamala for her loss.
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Well in that case it's not really relevant.
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shortsightedness is a stubborn affliction
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I imagine that folks on both sides believe this comment is about the other one.
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Good point. Same goes for fake news. Let's address the fear and anger on both sides first, only then we can get some facts in.
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What other side? America is a one-party country with a republican cancer metastasizing.
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They aren't wrong. At least not in spirit. In a non-stupid system they'd be correct at every level.
Until everybody in the conversation understands the contents of that video, you aren't at the point where you can have the conversation meaningfully. It changes the whole game.
And once they understand it, the remaining conversation may just be a mutual nod of understanding. First past the post is a third party killer, and not because the idiot populace lacks the will. The actual voting math itself is the problem, and ranked choice (or similar) solves the voting math problem in a way that third, fourth, fifth parties can exist and win, instead of debuffing allies and by so doing helping their enemies.
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the video learned the wrong lesson. party consolidation is the result of strategic voting. values voting is the solution.
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You just completely missed the point.
You literally cannot "values vote" your way to a functional First Past the Post voting system.
And trying to get others to join in your misunderstanding of basic reality is actively harmful to your, and their interests.
Maybe that's the problem. You don't want to admit that you're the bad guy...
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We all already understand how it works. Every single third party voter hears this stuff constantly, from literally everyone. It is impossible to not hear it while telling people you're voting third party, even if you tried as hard as you could to block it out.
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Maybe someday you'll actually understand then.
Your little party literally cannot win at anything beyond the local level.
Has your third party run for any local positions? No? They only show up in presidential election years?
That tells us they are horrible people who know damn well that they're helping Trump.
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Here are two candidates, and you vetter like one of them, because that's all you get, otherwise we couldn't call ourself a "democracy" anymore.
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I haven’t done the math. Assuming full support, is there a 3rd party candidate on the ballot in enough states to actually win?
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The last time a 3rd party candidate had an actual shot (and it was a looooong shot at best) was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran. He split the R vote badly enough that it handed the election to Clinton.
So long as we're using first past the post a 3rd party candidate has a vanishingly small chance of doing anything other than helping elect the opposition.
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And the lesson the Republican Party learned from that was to support the Greens—or any vaguely left party—hard.
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Admittedly, watching PR play out across the rest of the world kinda scares me. Israel is paralyzed into a destructive war because the ruling party is in a coalition with a few crazy extremists who will bring down the government (and thus expose Netenyahu to criminal trial) if their increasingly wild demands aren't met. Germany's having a clusterfuck of a time etc.
While there would be different parties, imagine the horribleness of a PR system right now in America. You could easily see a scenario where RFK acts as kingmaker and gets to demand whatever from trump or Harris. Given that trump would sell his children (maybe sub Melania for Ivanka) for the presidency, who knows what insanity would ensue? And there would be no real mechanism between the election and the next one to reign them in.
I didn't think there was anything scarier than a trump presidency until thinking that one through. Uggggh.
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Yes, I was there and that’s not what I was asking.
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Nope. The Green party's got their candidate on the most states' ballots, and they only managed to get 38 states. Granted, it's still mathematically possible, considering the threshold is 270 votes, and the states that have Stein on the ballot comprise 440 votes... but still. Would be incredibly, almost impossibly difficult.
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It doesn't even matter whether or not the Green party is technically able to win. As long as America has this first-past-the-post voting system, people will have to tactically vote for Democrats, because otherwise the Republicans will win. To stop the current duopoly, there needs to be an electoral reform first. It's probably nearly impossible to get that through but there's no other way.
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Stein and Oliver both do, though that's certainly not going to make a difference in their actual chances
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Do you mean the electors? Delegates are part of the nomination process, not the general election. The electors for a party are chosen by that party, then the voters cast votes for the electors. It's unlikely that electors pledged to third parties would be faithless, as they probably deeply identify with the party ideals.
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What bothers me about the people taking the bit of time and effort to go vote for 3rd parties is that there's really no point to it. Making sure your own vote doesn't matter is insane to me when voting isn't mandatory. They could've just done nothing and achieved the same outcome.
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tbf if you don't live in a swing state, your vote doesn't really matter either way
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Why are you encouraging people not to vote?
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Brother, I'm voting against the party with the absolutely insane and oppressive declared policies. What are you talking about?
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This is only true under a better voting system than first past the post. In first past the post, you've got a dumbass set of broken game rules where once two parties get big enough, they become the main and only characters, and all third parties can do is debuff one of them so the other one wins.
It's such a reliable thing that the two parties often try to fund third parties the other party's voters will like.
Obligate games blow ass.
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Yankies, I swear to fucking god - don't you fucking dare.
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Reason for deletion: "Misleading name for a theory"
What does this even mean? I just quoted "Duverger's Law" which is could be proved multiple times in plurality voting systems, especially in 2016 and 2020 in the US.
Also: David MF Duke from the MF KKK endorsed Jill Stein. Now go and ban me if you want.
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Wait, so they're saying "Duverger's Law" is really just a theory? That's not quite as dumb as calling evolution "just a theory", but it's up there.
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it's no law at all. it couldn't have been proven, and it can't be disproven either. it's a tautology.
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Just make sure it does work, this plan.. The world doesn't want Trump back...
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I don't need any mental gymnastics or long winded explanation. Both of the major party candidates have parts of their platform that are deal breakers for me. So, I will exercise my right to vote for someone that more aligns with my values.
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You very much do have the right to do that, as you should. And you don’t have to justify it for any reason.
But IF you have a preference between the R and D candidates, and somebody points out that you mathematically helped the one you dislike by voting third party or staying home, they are still correct. It’s not any kind of moral or ethical thing on its own; it’s just a side effect of how our voting system is designed.
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I don't understand how it's not a moral or ethical thing. Morals and ethics literally define which policy you vote for and mathematically helping or being neutral to the side you know will do things worse for your morals I feel like is pretty directly connected.
Don't get me wrong, I sympathize. My preferred candidate has done some bad things but it's not even close to how bad the other candidate is. If the two candidates were Hitler and mecha Hitler like I'm not gonna be happy but I'm voting for the less bad of the two. Third parties are just not mathematically viable
Also vote shaming is like peak democracy. You have a right to disagree with me and vote however you like. I'm not trying to take that away from people voting third party but I also have a right to complain about it
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It's objectively false to say that you "mathematically helped the one you dislike." If you remove a third party voter from existence, then both major parties receive the same number of votes and have the same chance to win. What you mean to say is that third party votes pass on an opportunity to help/hinder the candidate the voter prefers more/less.
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This is dumb. Both candidates are trash but a Harris presidency is way more preferable to a Trump presidency. But you do you
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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.
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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.
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well, we are all indeed aware of your ignorant idiocy so you have succeeded there
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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.
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In a different voting system that would be true, and if you don't have the somewhat obscure and technical piece of voting knowledge that this video explains really well, there's no reason not to think that:
Once you understand that the dumb is baked into the voting math itself, "too dumb to vote third party" clarifies into "first past the post is shit", and the solution becomes pushing like hell for ranked choice voting, single transferable vote, alternative vote, etc. Stopping the fourth reich is an implied portion of that process, as a way of preserving voting itself.
Make sure to watch that video because you're thinking correctly, just without factoring in one key game piece that there's no reason for you to have heard of, one that kind of flips the while thing around.
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I will say, the voting system that we advocate for is important.
There are three common choices. RCV, Approval, and STAR.
RCV has some momentum, but is just a bad voting system. It's arguably worse than Fist Past the Post, because in a way, it is FPtP. Or rather, it's several FPtP elections in a row, dropping the lowest each time.
Which is where a problem creeps in. See, it's drop lowest, and then never hear from that person again. So if they are the literal second choice of 99% of voters, they're dropped in the first round and never seen again.
This leads to ballots that look like this;
1 - dropped in 4th round 2- dropped in 1st round 3- dropped in 2nd round 4- dropped in 3rd round 5- Guy you kind of hate and only listed because the rules said you had to list 5. He's the one who got your vote.
If you had dropped your first choice, Your second through third might have won.
There's also a version of the above ballot that doesn't have a number 5, in that case your ballot is just thrown out as exhausted. Up to 18% of ballots get thrown out as exhausted. At least that's what the data from California and Maine has said.
Most countries that use IRV (RCV's real name) don't publish any election data, so we use what we've got.
Anyway, Approval and STAR are both immune to shit like the above, because how you rate one candidate has zero bearing on how you rate another. Woo for cardinal voting systems.
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That and the fact that it's legally impossible for one to win the presidency, yeah.
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I love the "You should just vote in the primaries" Democrats, who didn't even blink back in 2020 when Chris Matthews was on national television screaming that Bernie Sanders supporters were going to drag him into Central Park and shoot him.
This is the state of modern American politics. Republicans are told that they need to vote for the most reactionary, fascist, fringe candidate or they'll be murdered by migrants. Democrats are told that they need to vote for the most centrist corporate shill in the Senate or they'll be invaded by Russia.
Everything is fearmongering all the time. Nobody even talks about policy anymore.
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Every 4 years, hundreds of millions of people set their conscience to the side and continue to vote for the thing they'll complain about until the next time, when they do it all again.
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Voting/Electoral Fetishism replaces actual political action:
Issues, policies, and outcomes are all carefully manufactured and managed by a small number of power elites. The media, political parties, security forces (psych-ops), even the mafia and intellectual and artistic elites all work together to shape a political simulacrum within which our limited discourses and actions circulate. source
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It's pretty simple actually, I'm not voting for him.
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"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing." But hey, I'm sure those good men felt the same way you do.
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That quote is such a funny thing. My mom once quoted it to me as a reason to support the Iraq War. I didn't even know how to respond to that because it was so completely backwards. The way I saw it, the invasion of Iraq was evil triumphing because good people did nothing to stop it.
That's how I feel about you saying it to me now. Evil is triumphing in Gaza precisely because people aren't willing to take a stand on it.
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If you had to vote for Trump or Kamala, which would you choose?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Like there will be a next time is Trump wins
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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.
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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.
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duverger is an undisprovable tautology. it is not a law
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Liberals explaining how "harm reduction" means voting but never demanding anything while calling anyone who criticizes them a "Russian bot":
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Sounds like a Russian bot
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Ah im sorry I mean I fully support the party and would never betray it. I apologize for my thought crimes and will fight for democracy by blindly supporting the party :3
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Liberals during election time: VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO
Liberals during the rest of the 4 years:
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Tiiiired of the same loser rhetoric of voting for the lesser evil of two consistently deteriorating parties.
Dummies, where will it end? Put these corporate cock suckers on notice. Do not legitimize their rule with your lips.
End the duopoliticial tyranny. Used to be whig party vs democratic party. Used to.
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You don't end the duopoly by voting third party. You end it by organising between elections. But it's so much easier to virtue signal now and then lay back on the couch for the next 3.5 years plus you get the smug sense of self-satisfaction!
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Also the last democratic presidency has sucked a lot less corporate than previously.
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What were you doing? Clearly you understand the faults of the voting system.
Let me rephrase that: why are you okay with people being underrepresented by the voting system?
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Well we tried that by demanding proper primaries and putting non genocide candidates on the ballots. And we got called being Trump shills for that. We also got called Trump shills for saying Biden is clearly too old for office. If it wasnt for Harris to replace Biden, the race would already be over.
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It will end when a democrat gets rid of first past the post. Here's why:
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If you're not in a swing state, and Harris is going to win your state easily, it's fine to vote for a third party. If there's even a slim chance she is going to lose your state, you can't justify it. Harm reduction, guys.
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No. Your vote still counts. Don't throw it away on a third party "just because.".
Vote third party in your local elections, where they actually can do something. Get them into the system. Do not waste it on a zero chance presidential election.
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got invited to a 2016 watch party my a political junky friend. room full of people talking about how awesome it was that hillary would just win so they got to pick their dream 3rd party and make a statement with their vote. i didn't even stay to watch my state get called. they were crushed by the realization that so many people were in fact exactly who they'd said they are. couldnt watch them experiance that, couldn't find any sympathy to offer them.
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Voting for the Dems, a centrist party, in a non swing state, IS throwing your vote away. It will not make a difference and you're not expressing who you really support. The point of voting is (in order) to (1) reduce the terrible shit that's happening in our country and (2) to express your political preferences. If you're in a swing state you cannot do (1) by voting, and if you vote for the Dems you cannot do (2), assuming you're not a shitty centrist.
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There is no such thing as "not a swing state" in this election. Take it from me, a Georgian: in 2020, my state wasn't a swing state until all of a sudden it was. If people here took your advice, the Democrats would've lost the Senate that year.
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I'm in Washington. The Dems are not losing Washington. You're in Georgia. The Dems stand a good chance of losing Georgia. That's the difference.
I think people forget what it's like to not live in a swing state. I haven't seen an ad for a presidential candidate all year.
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As a Californian I'd have agreed with you except I think even a vote here signals something we need: the dire need to get rid of the electrical college. If Harris wins the national popular vote 60-40, it's even more obvious how busted it is. She wins Senate and House? You might see change. At least, as likely as a 60-40 win, lol.
That said, let's be honest, Green hasn't deserved a vote in decades. I really wish they'd try smaller races they could win and build momentum.
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Sending an electoral college message is a decent argument. I'm not persuaded about the house and senate argument though. In my case, I may not vote for Harris, because as somebody from Washington, she's not gonna lose Washington. But I'm voting for a bunch of downballot Dems because they're better progressives on a bunch of issues that Harris is not a good on. If it were even within fifteen points in Washington I'd vote for her, but I don't want to vote for genocide if I don't have to.
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No.
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There he is
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If it's meaningless, it's meaningless either way.
The important fact here is that strongholds can, in fact, fall. Especially when people stop guarding it because it never fell.
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harm reduction has a specific meaning. voting is not harm reduction.
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