I mean doyee?
No one’s voting 3rd party because they think they’ll win, they’re just throwing away a vote for Harris. Their statement is that they have no issue with another 4 years of Trump because their demands aren’t being met anyway (cough genocide).
You can argue all day about the rationality and lack of utilitarianism, but it won’t change anything.
If MLK were alive, he’d probably vote Democrat because he believes there is a solution in comprise over time, and keeping Republicans out is beneficial to that. (He generally favored the more progressive party).
If Malcolm X were alive, he’d probably be protesting just like the uncommitted group, but choose not to vote if his major demand wasn’t met, because his reasoning would be that any promised or hypothetical solutions would not come to fruition. (The Ballot or the Bullet)
Both have valid reasoning, and it can obviously depend on the situation, but it bugs me that 50 years later people still don’t understand why people choose to vote a certain way.
Change won’t come overnight (at least without revolution). Like evolution, it requires constant pressure on the system. Changes that are too radical kill the organism.
A long as people think we can jump from Geoge H.W. Bush to Bernie Sanders in one election it’s going to continue to fail.
Votw Harris this time. Vote for the person slightly more liberal than her next time, etc. It’s a process.
That’s one of my issues though, Harris is less liberal than Obama. It went in the opposite direction.
I advocated that Biden step down and allow a primary. Instead they ran with the VP because the DNC is not interested in actually bringing a more liberal or leftist candidate.
Meanwhile Trump has made Bush look good in comparison, so even if he stops running, an equal or worse candidate will simply take his place, and then we’ll be faced with a similar problem.
It would take 20 years to make a grassroots movement work, but if we never start it’s never gonna happen.
I’m 60. I would argue that 20 years is not a long time. Keep pushing.
Presumably because the US electorate isn’t actually leftist or progressive in general and losing swing states wouldn’t be balanced by extra votes in safe blue states.
But with the Democratic party, the conversation is ALWAYS “Vote us this time…” or “This election is too important!” They’ve been saying that for 50 years. Nah, friend. Now is the time for me to vote third party. Tired of waiting.
How is throwing your vote into a hole going to help exactly?
I’m voting for someone I believe in and who matches my values. If the duopoly has a problem with that, then they can work harder to welcome me rather than mock me for not voting for them.
So it “helps” because I’m voting for who I want to. As the system should be.
As it should be but not how it is.
But it can be that way if people stop being so scared to stray from the Duopoly.
We could also achieve universal peace if everyone just threw down their weapons, and no one would go hungry if everyone would stop being greedy. Unfortunately, people aren’t rational, and there’s cultural/social constructs that keep these things from happening.
If we want to change them for the better, we unfortunately have to operate within the constraints we’re faced with. We can change those constraints with hard work, but can’t just act as if those constraints don’t exist. It’s the same way folks pretend that being “color blind” re: racial issues will solve things. Would be great, but sadly plenty of folks are incapable of not being racist, and historical harms mean that we can’t just pretend that perception is the only problem.
You can’t get to a progressive candidate this way. A more progressive candidate is going to pull votes more from the left than the right. If you project the results at the point where the progressive candidate starts to matter they just tank the Democrat.If they take 80% of Democratic voters they just lose every state.
The US isn’t causing the genocide in Gaza and it will if anything be exacerbated if we bring in Trump to support Bebe
Both have valid reasoning
I disagree.
Based on your downvotes, looks like more people disagree with you.
But hey, don’t fret, friend. I know what it’s like getting downvoted every comment. Doesn’t bother me. Hopefully it doesn’t bother you. :)
Ok
Fucking well said. And you have my upvote for mentioning my man, Malcom X. Great post!
No one’s voting 3rd party because they think they’ll win, they’re just throwing away a vote for Harris.
Would you prefer people voting 3rd party not vote at all?
If Malcolm X were alive
Why Malcolm X’s Family Is Suing the FBI, NYPD, and CIA 58 Years After His Death
Do you seriously think X was pro-FBI? Why on earth would he support a candidate who was?
Did… did you even read what I wrote…?
My point was that he is exactly against the system and playing it by voting for a major party. His whole speech was literally about utilizing your status as a voter in key swing states to demand change from candidates by threatening your power as a voter to choose, regardless of whether you vote 3rd party or not at all.
My point was that he is exactly against the system and playing it by voting for a major party.
That’s not true.
His whole speech was literally about utilizing your status as a voter in key swing states to demand change from candidates by threatening your power as a voter to choose
That’s a wildly inaccurate interpretation
What does this mean? It means that when white people are evenly divided, and Black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who’s going to sit in the White House and who’s going to be in the dog house.
A ballot is like a bullet. You don’t throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.
Straight from his speech lol.
You don’t throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.
That’s very different from
His whole speech was literally about utilizing your status as a voter in key swing states to demand change from candidates by threatening your power as a voter to choose
He was arguing to abstain from voting without a quality candidates on the ballot. Not to court mediocre candidates by promising them your vote.
Who is this article for?
It doesn’t address the real problem here: That first past the post voting is a broken system and that main party candidates should make more effort to fix this glaring hole in the voting system.
Because fptp is garbage, third parties are little more than a method to undermine a candidates opposition (in the US in 2024 the green party is ironically propped up in part by the republican party)
By leaving out fptp it just sounds like anti democracy drivel.
Most all Harris voters agree things need to be changed.
We also agree that NOW is not the time for that. Just, let’s make sure the orange man stays out of power first before arguing what to change.
That’s nice dear, you’ve said this exact same thing since Reagan.
When is the right time?
I’m down for December of this year
If you think casting any ballot is a form of protest you need to learn what real protest looks like.
Hint: It doesn’t involve participating in the system you’re protesting.
Not voting indirectly also is a vote for Trump.
Not voting isn’t a protest either. Disrupting the voting? That would be a protest. But the Greens and Stein don’t have the balls for that.
no, it’s not
Yes, it is
if that were true, you could prove it. there is no world in which non votes are counted for Trump
indirectly
Say there are 9 voters. Four vote for Trump. Five heavily disagree with Trump (more than Trump’s four supporters). Three of them vote for Harris, two refuse to vote. Then these two people helped Trump since he’s winning now.
It works exactly the same on a much larger scale.
The only votes that help a candidate are votes for that candidate. A non-vote doesn’t help any candidate.
Good point!
I don’t get it…why would you even vote for Stein at this point? She’s not going to win, she’s not going to break the threshold for federal election funding, and I don’t see a substantial distinction between her policy and Harris.
Brain worm at least had a 1 in 1000 of breaking the funding threshold. Jill has what, less than a chance of finding the winning lotto ticket in the middle of the desert?
The only result of that vote is boosting Donald’s chances.
Why…why would you even vote for her at this point? What’s the end game?
Harris platform has exactly zero policies in common with the green party
Are you a paid spokesperson for the Green party? I don’t know how you can write something like that with a straight face.
Edit: I went to the green party page to make sure I’m not full of shit…I’m not…it’s a slightly more liberal Democrat policy page.
Same focuses on equality, green energy, and inclusion.
I really don’t get what you think a green party vote will get you that a vote for Harris won’t. Other than another feather in the fedora of stupid mistakes we make when we are young, or you really like Russia. I don’t get it at all.
Because you’re young, clearly. Maybe this is just the first election you’ve paid attention to. Every disaffected voter was like you, once.
Then we realized dem platform has nothing to do, whatsoever, with what the do in office. Even when they have a majority in both houses of Congress and can pass anything their heart desires, they actively refuse to pass legislation relating to the platform they sold us on. You can only be lied to so many times before you realize doing the same thing will not get you a different outcome. Voting dem will never improve your life. Maybe third party will, maybe not, but voting dem won’t, it’s empirically proven.
I’m old enough to remember the green party votes haven’t worked in the last 5 presidential elections. I threw away a vote on them when Obama had a lock on his second term.
Here we are a couple decades later and the green party has done zero to affect major change in the US. They did likely get Hillary fucked, so thanks for that 4 years of hell I guess.
Brain worm was your best chance this cycle and he’s been paid off already.
Really…seriously…what will voting green get you here? You can’t win, you can’t get federal funding, if you break 2% I’ll be amazed…
What’s the point of a green vote when Harris is so closely aligned with your platform?
Yeah. My first vote was for Bill Clinton in '92. I voted for him again in '96. I saw no difference between Gore and Bush and didn’t vote in 2000. We got the utter shitshow that was Bush 43, but even then I still voted third party in some elections.
No more. Team Red is now Team Fascist, and either Red or Blue will be in office unless and until Team Green or Team Yellow or whatever you got can take more than half of their political ideology’s votes.
That’s the real problem here. Third Parties cap out at 10% of the total vote, or about 20% of their ideologies’ parties vote share. They can’t win THIS party’s primaries. How can I expect them to win the country?
No child, they didn’t lose clinton the election she refused to campaign for.
And no, a genocidal cop that has only repeated Trump’s 2016 immigration platform has nothing in common with my preferred policies. Greens are he compromise party. The minimally progressive option of things developed countries generally already have.
nothing in common with my preferred policies
Really? And the chick eating dinner with Putin represents you as a person? That’s what you stand for? That’s an interesting statement.
I don’t care who she has dinner with.
Well I’m definitely not voting Harris or Trump. So I could see how some people would decide on Stein.
The people who don’t vote will far out number those who vote for Jill Stein. Why do we let them off the hook when they would have a larger impact on the election.
Don’t get me wrong, Jill Stein sucks, but don’t blame her voters. Blame those who don’t vote to blame those who blindly vote for trump because of “the taxes”
I am tired of blaming someone who gets 2% for when bad things happen. Blame the 30% who did nothing.
I realize a portion of those who don’t vote are due to voter suppression, bring the fire you bring for stein voters to those suppressing votes, it will be a more effective strategy. Stein and her voters are an easy scapegoat.
I am tired of blaming someone who gets 2% for when bad things happen. Blame the 30% who did nothing.
That’s privilege talking. 100% turnout should not be a requirement, when we do not have, at the very least, a national holiday for voting. Voting is not as easy for everyone as it might be for you.
Agreed. Be mad at the people preventing it.
Hmm maybe. I agree it should be a national holiday and I agree that the current situation provides far more barriers for some groups than others.
Do I think those things are solely or even primarily responsible for that map? No, I do not.
Nope, totally blaming Stein voters. They’re idiots, truly stupid, to believe that a protest vote does anything except hurt the major party they’re most aligned with. Stein is a useful idiot, funded by fascists to leech votes from Democrats. She got Trump elected in 2016.
Third parties aren’t a thing under our system. If we were a parliamentary system, sure, but not under our current system, so take your desires for boosting a third party and boost yourself into a lake.
Blaming Stein voters does nothing to solve any of the underlying issues with our system. She’s a useful idiot for the Republicans and a useful scapegoat for the Democrats. Blindly and simply blaming her and her voters is allowing the status quo as much as voting for her, it’s a short sighted problematic worldview that is a distraction from calling those currently in power to do anything to change the status quo of our system.
I blame both
If you guys think the spoiler effect isn’t real then I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I voted Green in 2000. Never again.
Climate town just did a really interesting video about how the election in 2000 was literally stolen by the Republicans via brothers Bush and Bush and their corrupt secretary of State in Florida. And honestly wouldn’t matter if you had voted red, Green blue purple or rainbow.
Yes, it was stolen, however they were only able to do that because the margins were close. Had the green voters instead voted for the candidate closest to them that had a chance (Gore), then it would have mattered.
Green votes were well within the margin that would have triggered the automatic recount. It just would have been an automatic recount for Bush, not gore. Meaning if they blocked the hand recount like they did, it would have gone to gore.
The margins in the swing states legitimately come down to a couple thousand votes sometimes.
Don’t be stupid. Vote Kamala. If you hate for some reason fine, but it’s either that or…oh dear God.
The dems will never learn a lesson if they lose, they never have
maybe if they would try to court literaly anything to the left of where reagon was they would not need to worry about people voting there. this is the Dems bed they need to lie in it and not yell at the voters for not longer supporting them
Ah yes, I remember how protest voting went in 2016
That wasn’t the reason why democrats lost in 2016.
I remember the dems nominating a canidate who was hardly liked within the party and had no appeal without, and who was deeply concered in learching the party to the right… how about instead of assuming the dems are correct and the voters are wrong lets look at why the voters are disatisfied
It didn’t actually have any effect on 2016. Even if every single Jill Stien voter had gone to Clinton, she still would have needed to win over 50% of Gary Johnson’s voters to win.. Since it’s pretty unlikely that half of the Libertarian party’s votes were from disaffected leftists, no, the protest vote did not cost Hillary the election.
For the editor and anyone else who does not understand math: people voting for Trump means Trump gets a vote.
A vote for Jill Stein means Trump does not get a vote.
Would you rather have someone vote third party or vote Trump?
The whole thing feels like an argument intended to push people away rather than rally support.
I’ve noticed a LOT of Lemmy’s seem to want to push people away rather than welcome or rally support when it comes to uncommitted voters or third-party voters… Very surprising to me.
Corporate says spot the difference here.
Exactly! I’ll share your downvotes…but you’re right.
If you live in a state that has even a slight chance to go red, yes, you should vote for Kamala. But if you live in a comfortably Blue or Red state, you should vote for the party that best reflects your ideology. I always vote for the farthest left candidate because I think that if my representatives see a strong third-party showing for a left-wing ideology, it will make them think twice before they pivot to the center.
Not voting for the Democrat gives the Democrats all the reason they need to ignore absolutely everything you say.
Voting for Democrats and donating to them gives you persuasive power within the party to help steer it.
LOL, what? Are you high? No, they’re not going to listen to you if they have your vote already; why would they work for it if they already have it? And if they only tried to appeal to people who already voted for them, then they wouldn’t spend all this time and energy trying to appeal to moderate conservatives, would they? Why aren’t they ignoring them, and instead only ignoring the left?
And you think they’re going to listen to me if I give them money? How much money do you think I’m giving them? Do you think I have a super pac? What do you think the conversations are in DCCC headquarters are like? “Hey guys, I know that the financial-services sector gave us $462 million in 2020, but @pjwestin just donated $50, and he’d like us to reinstate Glass-Steagall, maybe we should listen to him?” Like, Christ, maybe in deluded for thinking enough third-party votes will scare them, but at least I’m not naive enough to think I can negotiate with someone by giving them everything they want upfront.
You sound like you’ve never called or written to your representative or their office, or dealt with a local campaign office. Because what I describe is true, and what you describe is you declaring to the world, “I’m choosing to make myself irrelevant to everyone.”
I call my Senators and my rep all the time. I tell them I’m a voter in my district and I care about X. They’ve never once asked me if I voted for them or how much money I gave them.
I wonder who represents you. I don’t get blown off my my reps. And I don’t donate a ton of money, but I do volunteer.
Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, and Ayanna Pressley. What representatives do you have at your beck and call with your amazing volunteering skills?
That’s an assholish characterization. And when I lived in Walpole, I had Ed Markey, too. I called his office a couple of times, said, “I vote for Ed Markey, and I want <…>” and they took down what I said, and my info, and I’d a letter reply a little while later.
My current rep is Adam Smith. He has actually been less responsive than other reps I’ve called, but I’ve gotten letters from his office after calling with my requests. And in talking to office staff, you can often find out how pressured they are over issues that constituents call about. They definitely care.
Tell them you’re withdrawing your support, and they’ll apologize, but you’re done getting listened to. They know it’s a waste of time.
I don’t know why people are so worried, surely all the moderate Republicans you courted by mirroring GOP policy on immigration, the border, the military, aid to Israel, fossil fuels, social services, and the death penalty will be enough to win? I was assured by very confident Dems that they didn’t need my dumb lefty vote to win this election 🤷
Why don’t democrats invest in actually bringing people to their movement instead of wasting their time on shitting on 3rd parties? Let people vote who they want to vote for, and who they feel voices their opinions the best. That’s what democracy is at the end of the day.
Why don’t third parties get out there and win some local elections and then build their way to the state level instead of wasting their time shitting on democrats? I’m not saying there’s not plenty of good reasonsto shit on democrats but if any third party wants to be taken seriously they should start acting like it.
Because people are clearly unhappy with the democratic party, so there’s obviously a market for it. People that would’ve otherwise stayed home instead of voting for the democrats now have a voice. That’s what democracy looks like, at least in most European countries that is. It’s fairly normal to see smaller parties pop up that better represent a subsection of the electorate than to see huge monolithic parties that try to encompass everything.
Because people are clearly unhappy with the democratic party, so there’s obviously a market for it.
There isn’t though. No third party has ever won the presidency.
In Congress, there has never been even 1% of them being third party. Same with the senate.
Where exactly is the market, and why is it not at all reflected in any part of the elected government?
Is it perhaps because it doesn’t exist?
Oh the paradox of the third party. They’re too weak to make a dent, but also the root of all evil. This sounds like fascism to me.
If they’re so harmless, then why do you care if a very small portion of the electorate votes for them? After all it won’t make a dent, right? :)
If they make such a big dent that the democratic party needs to run smear campaigns against them, then how come they’re so harmless and underrepresented?
To me it looks like you have a dysfunctional system. They are popular enough to be voted by a huge chunk of the electorate, thus hurting the big legacy parties, but your system is built in such a way that they end up being underrepresented at the national level.
If they’re so harmless, then why do you care if a very small portion of the electorate votes for them? After all it won’t make a dent, right? :)
I didn’t claim that anywhere.
To me it looks like you have a dysfunctional system.
The US does, so the looks are correct.
Because I’m sure that LA, in california, is under threat of swinging right if people protest vote too much. I’m sure of it, it just makes sense.
LA Times - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for LA Times:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
Looks like I’m not the only one on Lemmy who’s not voting for the Duopoly. This is an awesome thread. Thanks for posting, OP!
