Just First Past the Post voting things

I love how with pure Goebbels-style repetition, the idea "Trump is so horrifying that we should put a stop to him even if you think the alternative isn't great" has become some kind of bogeyman. Bro, it is the reality. It is the unvarnished truth and I can't see how anyone can possibly say it's not.
If you don't like a local police force brutalizing your protest and Biden not doing anything to stop them or even say they shouldn't do that (which, I agree, is bad), you're really not gonna like Trump v2 ordering the National Guard to open fire on you or having federal agents drive around snatching people. And that was last time, before Project 2025 succeeded in its organized effort to remove a lot of the guard rails that prevented, for example, those orders to fire on protestors from actually being carried out.
And yes, working for ranked choice voting, or giving the Democrats a whole bunch of shit for being their corrupt neoliberal selves, both sound like great ideas. I don't see those as mutually exclusive with voting not to end the world in this specific election. Do you know for example how difficult it will be to work for ranked choice voting if Trump's expanded CBP has seized the voting machines and is going to announce who the winner of all the elections at all levels going forward is?
- The last wave of "biden continued 70 yrs of US foreign policy in the mid east by authorizing open arms sales with Israel so hes clearly hitler and not voting for him is critical" has stopped being so effective on here, so its time to shake up the game. It will only get more insidious until the election.
  All the while we ignore the most important point that putin has called Ukraine a stepping stone in the denzaification of eastern europe and that keeping twittler out of office qnd electing dems is the best chance the planet has at avoiding death and destruction on a level not seen since WWII. Also ignoring the fact that the death and destruction in Ukraine alone is still on a greater scale than the atrocities in Gaza or anywhere else on the planet at this time.
  
  Yeah. If it wasn't Gaza, it would be something else. They're just gonna pick whatever is the best thing they can come up with and run with it with whatever consistent day after day flow of non stop memes and bad arguments. With Gaza they kind of have a point, there's plenty of legitimate criticism to be made, but it's not like the whole sub would be organic logical discussion about "hey how are we going to get Ranked Choice Voting actually implemented" and making progress if nothing had happened in Gaza. They'd be back on unions or claiming that he was bad on transgender issues or saying he tripped when he was walking up the stairs or forgot someone's name one day, OMG FUCK FUCK FUCK DON'T VOTE, HE'S TERRIBLE, DON'T VOTE WHATEVER YOU DO.
  Honestly the thing that pisses me off the most about it is that the neverending back and forth of "Biden is bad" "Trump is worse" "but Biden is bad" "but Trump is worse" drowns out anything more pleasant and productive that could be happening instead, and turns people off, because the whole nature of the discussion is overall hostile and unreasonable. I mean that's sort of the nature of the beast as far as politics subs; it doesn't need any extra amplification from outside. I miss the /r/sandersforpresident days when people were organizing and trying to talk about real shit and get things done.
- It's very clear a lot of people didn't pay attention to history or civics class. Party politics always ends up voting for a compromise candidate.
  
  Yeah but these people are so militant about refusing to vote that they didn't even show up for the guy who'd have advocated their side of the compromise in the primaries. Hence all the magical thinking about "well if they counted individual donations instead of votes...!"
  Bernie would be rounding out his second term if these people took half the energy they spent on whining about voting and actually fucking voted.
- I hope you don’t really expect anyone here to understand that nuance exists in the world. Because they’re too busy trying to out-outrage each other.
  I used to say the same shit you’re saying. They’ll just accuse you of supporting gEnOciDe and high fife their little friends.
- If Democrats had actually done anything to make sure this man was jailed or otherwise barred from running for office, then we wouldn't even be in this position. I sadly think they prefer that Trump is the candidate that they run against because they think he's easier to beat.
  This upcoming election should have been our last line of defense, not our first.
  
  Prison is done by the judicial system, not Congress or executive or political parties. You know, separation of powers.

Accurate, but fixing this means getting more involved in local politics. State and local governments are where decisions are made, and progress is the slow boring of hard boards.

Oh shut up. Vote locally and fix this shit together the whole focus on federal is the problem. Reinforce state rights over federal and within a generation we could be back on track.
This whole demonizing of Biden and the Democrats is so stupid. They're held by corporations because we've failed to use our votes properly and put shit heads in power.
- Ding ding ding
  I actually don't agree that Biden is more of the same bullshit; at least domestically he's done some fuckin massive things, empowered unions, taken big action on climate change for the first time I think anyone in power in the US has taken it seriously. But even if you don't believe that (or regardless of it, if you're angry as hell that he abetted a genocide, which, I get) -- what's the logic on saying "I am so unhappy with politics in the US that I will decide not to get involved with it anymore and just let things take their course no matter how much worse they might get"?
  The right answer if you're pissed off about Biden and the DNC, is to try to figure out how to get what you want (which, if you think for 5-10 seconds, you will realize Trump not being in office is absolutely critical to) and work for it. The American government is not going away any time soon (at least, not without getting replaced with something 10 times worse). It will be there, whether you're involved or not. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by taking this bullshit "Well if you will not take me to Disneyworld I will leave the stove on and if the house burns down, oh well" petulant attitude. We tried that approach after 1968, and it kind of felt-like-it-made-sense at the time for more or less the same reasons, and look where it got us. From JFK and the civil rights act, to "welfare to work" and death squads all over Central America and everyone's favorite chart.
- No kidding huh.
- “oh no someone expressed deep and genuine discomfort with the future of their state, better tell them to shut up about it”
  
  Because it is poorly framed and this is why voter turnout was so bad for so long. This mentality is part of the problem
- I'm with you except the states rights over federal, it's pretty obvious that the states rights argument has been taken over by the forces that wish to divide and conquer on working class and disenfranchised folks' interests. We gotta adopt something like German Federalism to begin shaking this all out.
  Felony Law is the exclusive domain of the Federal Government
  Criminal Law is the domain of both with Federal Law taking primacy
  Civil Law is the domain of the states with the exception of a law passed with a qualified super majority of the house and senate, (2/3rds of the voting representatives and senators representing a total of at least 2/3rds of the population)
- Wasted your time to say something completely stupid.

I love that most of lemmy has learned the electoral lesson from polsci 101 that FPTP is garbage and needs to be destroyed.

Yes, proportional voting would be better.

Sorry you don't like living in a democracy. I understand it's not to everyone's taste.
Like, fuck, why do you think we have two fucking geriatrics running against each other? Do you think it's because young folk turned out for Bernie in the Dem primary? Do you think it's because Trump was deeply unpopular in the GOP primary?
These are the cretins that have been voted in by the plurality, and no amount of accusations of backroom boogeymen and the Deep State changes the fucking vote counts backed up by innumerable contemporary polls and exit polls. You think I want to live in a fucking world where Bernie didn't get the nomination because my generation didn't fucking turn out? Fuck no.
Difference starts with the citizenry, but it seems like the only difference many on here attempt to sow is more apathy.
- I think you missed the point of the meme.
  People vote for whoever wins their parties primary. That's bad, we agree.
  First past the post voting would allow more than two parties, giving us more options. We also don't truly live in a democracy due to the electoral college.
  Our system is messed up, and we're allowed to criticize the Democrat party for its lack of action to improve things. That's not an attack on democracy itself in any way.

And the propaganda continues. It's weak and pathetic.