Trying to build viable third parties by voting for them in presidential elections is like trying to build a third door in your house by repeatedly walking into the wall where you want the door to be.
This is the way. It is possible and unlikely to have a third party win under the right conditions, like with how the Republican Party became a national party after Lincoln was elected as a third party candidate. But ultimately there will always only be two parties with the outdated FPTP voting method. If only George Washington knew about and pushed for a better voting system than FPTP.
I don't think they really existed yet in his era. You've got to remember that Australia, a much younger country, invented the secret ballot. It was known as the "Australian Ballot" for a long time.
In 1294-1621 the election of the Pope used Approval voting. Venice also used it.
Australia, a much younger country, invented the secret ballot
The election of the Pope required secret ballot since 1621. And the concept existed since Ancient Greece and was used in elections and courts of Roman Republic.
IMO, it's not the full story to say the Republican party was a third party that year. The previous opposition to the Democrats had a rift and came apart. I think you are underselling what "the right conditions" are. This is more like a new party filling a void.
That year the Democrats themselves (regressives as this was well before Southern Strategy) split into two. Running both a candidate for "states' rights" style slavery and another for "fuck you, slavery everywhere" style slavery.
All it takes is a bunch of celebrities endorsing third parties and it's done. At some point in your lifetime you will probably see a third party winning in the usa and it will simply happen with media and celebrities redirecting everyone vote. It happens all the time in other countries: people get tired of the local rulers and to keep protests and disorder at bay the government through mass media redirects attentions to a new and fresh party that already got bribed and corrupted by the ruling class.
In Australia government funding is distributed to political parties based on the number of first preference votes they get as well so even if your first choice doesn't get in, you still helped them by putting them first.
I like CGP Grey and all, but power dynamics is an important aspect of poltics. An aspect he completely ignores in favour of spreadsheet thinking.
Yeah so proportional representation systems kinda suck. Israel has one and it ended up with a conservative party making concessions to far right crazies to form a coalition. Sure minorities are in the parliament, but they have zero power because the only thing that matters is the backroom negotiations between parties to form a coalition.
The biggest problem with FPTP is the name. Really we should call it a community representation system (which is what it is) and call proportional representation system a "party coalition" system, which is what it actually is. In a party coalition system the negotiations between party leaders to form coalitions is all that matters, everyone else is just there to fill seats which are owned by the parties.
In a community representation system each seat is own by a representative of the community who can vote against their party or leave their party. Parties are incentivized to keep the community leaders happy or they could lose seats.
If you want third parties, it's better to go with a ranked choice system. That gives people more choice over who represents their community, and allow them to have compromise options in case their top choice doesn't get enough votes. You don't actually have to give parties full ownership of the seats (making them redundant) to have more options.
I also generally prefer a Condorcet Method (ranked choice, single winner) over mixed-member-proportional, but either one would be a massive improvement over our current system.
An aspect he completely ignores in favour of spreadsheet thinking.
That's bc he explains each concept mostly in isolation of others, leaving other concepts for separate videos themselves. But in e.g. Rules for Rulers, he very much discusses power dynamics. And I thought he had another one - in addition to the more mathematical one - illustrating FPTP using the animal kingdom, where technically people might assume one thing to be true, but based on power dynamics in practice it never is.
So watch Rules for Rulers yet if you haven't - it may change literally everything about your understanding, as it did mine.
rules for Rulers, outlining necessary considerations involved with any path forward - i.e. it works against anyone and especially those who ignore this principle
Yeah I've seen all of these videos before. Problem is, these aren't isolated concepts. There are very specific power dynamics within a proportional representation system that aren't the same as the power dynamics in a community representation system. He doesn't go into those details in the rules for rulers videos, only the broad concept of democracy is mentioned. He only goes into a some math on the FPTP video but doesn't discuss the differences power dynamics for those different systems.
Basically in a community representation system (called FPTP by people trying to make it sound arbritrary an unfair) the power flows up from the communities. In a proportional representation system the power flows down from the party leadership.
Considering the "rules for rulers" video it seems CGP Grey thinks all government has to be top down, so he doesn't seem to have even considered the possibility of power flowing upwards from a community. This is what happens in the system he thinks is bad, so I'd say he hasn't adequately considered everything about the subject.
We don't actually elect rulers we elect people to represent our communities. Sure they're usually part of a party but because we elect representatives, not parties, that representative has the option of leaving the party if it serves the interests of the community they represent. Since parties can lose seats between elections they have to listen to the the elected representatives (community leaders) to avoid losing seats. People in a community put pressure on their representative, the reps but pressure on the party leadership, power flows upwards from the people.
Proportional representation only seems better if you think as CGP does and believe we can only be ruled over and we need to find a better way to select rulers. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of representative democracy.
It seems you are mixing the concepts of voting systems and candidate selection. FPP nor FPTP should not sound scary. As a voting systems, FPP works well enough more often than many want to admit. The name just describes it in more detail: First Preference Plurality.
Every voting system is as bottom-up or top-down as the candidate selection process. The voting system itself doesn't really affect whether it is top down or bottom up. Requiring approval/voting from the current rulers would be top-down. Only requiring ten signatures on a community petition is more bottom up.
The voting systems don't care about the candidate selection process. Some require precordination for a "party", but that could also be a party of 1. A party of 1 might not be able to get as much representation as one with more people: but that's also the case for every voting system that selects the same number of candidates.
Voting systems don't even need to be used for representation systems. If a group of friends are voting on where to eat, one problem might be selecting the places to vote on, but that's before the vote. With the vote, FPP might have 70% prefer pizza over Indian food, but the Indian food vote might still win because the pizza voters had another first choice. Having more candidates often leads to minority rule/choice, and that's not very good for food choice nor community representation.
He seems to think like a mathematician or philosopher and enjoyed considering each of those items separately, in isolation from one another - plus as a YouTuber, he needs to release moar content, moar often, so multiple videos helps him maintain his existence that way as opposed to a single, larger video, especially on a complex topic that since it is >1 minute long, the vast majority of people are not going to watch anyway.:-P
But anyway, if he's already mathematically proved certain things about e.g. ranked-choice, and how it differs from whatever else, then why should he bother going further into the weeds, that the vast majority of people don't care the tiniest bit about? After all, a look at basically every election ever, especially recently, reveals that the common people know next to nothing about how the system works. e.g. people voting against Hillary Clinton in 2016, either by voting 3rd party, or switching to the "Never Hillary" movement to actively vote for Trump, but then being shocked - shocked I tell you! SHOOKETH! - when he won. So if we can't figure out that 1+1=2, then differential calculus, much less simple algebra, is going to be beyond us (collectively) as well.
So, I took it as not that he refused to consider those other possibilities, just that he was focusing his description to explain one thing in isolation of other concepts, as much as possible at least. e.g. regardless of whether he should have been talking about (or naming it as) FPTP, that's what he was aiming to do, so that's what he did.
About the Rules for Rulers I think similarly as above but also: the "rulers" there aren't necessarily the ones in charge, as is true for the monarchies & totalitarian regimes, but rather the "voters" who put those people in charge. In that formulation, why should the non-voters (e.g. literal children, people who are mentally disabled, etc.) have power over & above that of the voters, i.e. the responsible "rulers"?
Although that is exactly what always ends up happening... eventually, in any such system. Imagine a person who votes, individually, but then also is responsible for gerrymandering a district of lets say a million people. So they should have had power equal to 1/1000000, though instead they overturned the decisions of those million people and single-handedly altered the election, FAR in excess of their individual voting power. They cannot overturn the collective weight of a full million voters all speaking with a single unified voice... but they could make a vote for e.g. 1/10th vs. 9/10ths end up with the former rather than the latter being in charge, which is pretty damn powerful (it doesn't have to be "perfect", it just has to work - possibly in conjunction with other things like removing certain classes of people as voters). So here, irl rather than in pure theory in isolation of irl considerations, "rulers" end up NOT being the voters, but rather those in charge b/c they are willing to cheat the system, to keep themselves in charge or at least others exactly like them, using non-voting schemes. i.e. it is the True Rulers(TM) who are "in charge" rather than the voting ones, who were put into place by non-voting systems, so the entire system gets turned upon its head and does if not 100% then still effectively the opposite of what it was originally intended to - that is, it ignores/overturns votes rather than uses them to determine the outcomes of elections.
So if we, the aspiring rulers i.e. voters, wish to actually rule, then we need to know what we are up against. And if others cheat... well then that does not mean that we have to as well, but we should at least be aware that that is what is going on!?! To some degree at least, even if not 100%, hence it is "biased" and "unfair" and "rigged". That is what I took from those videos, collectively.
Switzerland has a good system, just copy it.
(Yes, not the same country, size difference and so on and on but its still a thousand times better than the US system)
Math doesn't decide what people vote, they are free to vote anything they want. Parties don't automatically side with each others because another is most likely to win. This video is rooted in the mindset that politics and elections are a horse race between left and right.
What's preventing third parties from winning it's not math but the propaganda and the power of the red and blue party. The ruling parties didn't become this powerful mathematically. Over decades and centuries the ruling class paved their way and ensured their power with violence and repression.
If third parties aren't mathematically impossible, where are all members of third party during midterms? Local elections? The work it takes to make real lasting change is done down ballot, where are they at those times? Why do they only creep up during presidential races? The above analogy may not be perfect, but it's pretty damned close... but we could also compare third party to all the lazy animals in the story of the little red hen...
The government spend billions of dollars to make sure third parties are nowhere to be seen. This post being evidence. You got a fascist party and one involved in a genocide yet you see warnings about not voting for anyone else.
It doesn't take a whole lot of money to run for city council, local officials, sherif, alderman. It takes a bit, but not millions to run for state government positions. Are you saying the federal government is quashing local and state third parties? That is where you make your sweeping electoral reforms for federal elections. Why don't we ever hear about them making moves in those races? Where are they when I go to vote for my city council? My county commissioners? Are you telling me the federal government is coming down and removing them from ballots?
That's a pretty serious accusation, and I'd love to see some sources on that, because I'm with you all the way if that's the case.
But when you've got someone who was wined and dined by an impotent dictator, and a half dozen of his cronies and yes men coming in and trying to split the vote for the best chance of preventing a take over by the impotent dictator's choice clown... and then suddenly you've got people toting her banner when she's been largely silent the past 3.5 years... it kind of makes you wonder, or it should... assuming you've got more than 3 braincells reenacting the DVD screen saver.
I see a few bits of information about it happening at the presidential election level, but I'm not finding anything at the state and local level. Can you provide some sources on that?
Can you see that you're arguing against fictitious strawmen? You seem to be operating under the delusion that for all the dumb normies who have "bought into" the existing two-party system, politics is just a game that they play without understanding. You've reduced them all to NPC's who lack the capacity to reason; obviously their only motivation could be mindless conformity to their "team".
Is it your contention that it doesn't matter what party controls the branches of government, because they're both the same? While this is factually inaccurate, it would at least be in line with the actions you're advocating. Speaking of which, how exactly do you imagine a "protest" vote would deny the subsequently elected government legitimacy? What force and effect do you foresee that action producing? Because anyone with a working knowledge of our electoral system can tell you that the only discernable result will be the empowerment of the minority party, which in this case seeks a fascist overthrow of our democratic system.
What you're doing here is applying shallow, childish logic to a complex and nuanced problem, while pretending to have some high-minded motivations which—if they exist at all—clearly haven't been thought through.
But but, building a real third party from the ground up in local elections and/or changing our voting system from first past the post takes a lot of time and real effort. That's a lot of hard work. It's a lot harder than just showing up to one election every 4 years and casting a vote that makes you feel like you're special and smarter than everyone else.
Yeah, I've recently talked with my therapist about this choice between very slow, very hard work and sitting on my butt dreaming. And about the idea that it's better to avoid action than to act, if I'm not sure I'll act right. And how it apparently came to me in my teens, when I've been doing martial arts for some time, girls would smile at me often, and in general I thought I might be too stupid and happy and there should be something smarter. That 'smarter' was, of course, just another teenage idea of being wise and not like everyone else. Fucked up my life for a decade.
By the way, people who'd be removed and theoretical and talk about some imagined third movement created via some magic other than voting - would be called 'idiots' in ancient Athens. Because they are on the side of an idea, not real politics. Then it became a rude word.
Any such decision to try and find a smart shortcut, or that it's better to wait and see how it goes instead of sweating, - are all wrong and are exactly what propaganda works for. Being honest is smarter than being dishonest. And voting for the party most fitting your ideals is smarter than for the lesser evil.
That is the most selfish possible way to approach life. You're not the main character, other people's lives are at stake. Voting a specific way just to make yourself feel better knowing you are endangering others by doing so is not some morally superior choice.
Risking letting someone win who conspired to overthrow an election and who has promised his supporters that if they elect him this time they won't have to vote ever again. Selfish naive children. Fuck Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democratic machine, at least you'll be able to vote again and you might actually get to negotiate for things that make people's lives better.
You are. You are also responsible for your own choices whether you admit it or not.
That is the most selfish possible way to approach life.
If taking responsibility is selfish, then selfishness is a virtue.
at least you’ll be able to vote again and you might actually get to negotiate for things that make people’s lives better.
They are already threatening you with Trump if you don't vote for them and don't want to compromise. So about that "you'll be able to vote again" - I think that's true, but since that threat works, that'll likely be the same kind of choice over and over. When you agree to get owned for protection, you usually don't get owned just once.
Selfish naive children.
For fuck's sake, are you 16?
How can a grown person be that arrogant without knowing shit about game theory?
People who proport to support Palestine, but advocate actions that allow a win for Donald "I'm the best king of Israel ever" Trump and his "Finish them" Israeli bomb-signing Republican party aren't being honest with the people they're debating with.
It is utterly unprincipled republicanism when people PRETEND to care and then advocate allowing the fascist KKK racist maniac genocidal republican party to win.
This post was reported. I think the objection would be to the second paragraph where it sounds like you are making a claim about the character of the person.
We want this to be an inviting place where people can share what they are passionate about. Everyone is free to attack each other's opinions and stances. However, there are rules against attacking individuals and groups of people.
Not only is it against the rules but there are much more effective methods of arguing. Ad hominem attacks are poor at persuasion.
Do you mind rewriting the second paragraph to focus on the arguments made in the prior comment, rather than the character of the person?
That is exactly how subjective reality works. Everything is interconnected, so whether something is relevant to some subject is purely a matter of choice.
Except some people of questionable intelligence and culture consider their choice on that matter more important than that of others.
Especially if you ram that not-door long, hard, deep, and strong enough, really get up in there and penetrate that wall. If you run out of steam you could even switch to an electric appliance, but in that case be gentle (though not too gentle...).
Um.... I'm not sure where this is going, and at this point I'm afraid to continue? 😔
You'll get a boatload of spoiler effect elections until people start voting tactically again. Third parties need to start locally and not participate in the presidential elections for a long time.
There is a path to voter reform by creating hung parliament and require voter reform in a coalition agreement. Once dominant running for governor or a senator becomes possible.
Primary elections are how parties change. Primary elections are how the Republican party became what it is today. They are often the highest-leverage vote you can cast if you're in a solid district.
Yup. People don't realize there is already a not horrible approximation of runoff voting that still avoids the spoiler effect.
And just look at what happened when Sanders realized that. He went from being a meme about how nobody watches C-SPAN to one of the more influential politicians on the Left.
Primaries are still subject to spoiler effects and such.
In my very blue state this year where the top two in the primary go on to the general, there was a local position which had a whole bunch of well qualified Democrats vs just a couple of Republicans. (Incumbent not running)
The dem vote was split enough that we very nearly had just the two Republicans in the general. Like less than 60 votes away.
And there are scenarios under runoff voting where similar can occur (e.g. two seats, 2 right wing, 4 left wing) and is where the "election theory" aspect of things that certain folk are still bitching about (because that is the most important thing to have happened in the past 8 years, clearly). The party needs to take the results of the primary and downselect who actually runs to avoid splitting their own vote.
No voting system is perfect. But people should really understand what we have and what their NEED improves and fails to improve rather than just insisting "new is better".
Primary elections aren’t democratic either (see party delegates). I feel like people who say this are rarely politically engaged in their communities. Same with the people who say to get involved in local city politics to make change.
Ultimately you’re supporting a facist system that is historically atrocious and currently financially supporting a genocide almost singlehandedly but go ahead and keep telling people that the best way to maintain some semblance of moral character is to vote in this sham.
You'd need to grow the third party / greens by having them become a viable party in local elections and state elections first. The greens have failed to do that. Which means they have no chance except to spoil the election.
I have high hopes but my logical side says they can just be pandering like any of the other politicians: they know people support it, they know it will fail. They look good for backing it even tho they aren't worried about changing the status quo either
My point (i.e. the "high hopes" part) is that this sounds legit and awesome. I do my best to be an optimist, but I have been burned way to many times to not concede that there may be ulterior motivation afoot.
Right wing people tend to be subservient and just fall in line and vote Republican. People on the left tend to be less pragmatic and can be enticed to vote for Green or whatever even when it's obvious they won't win "because of my principles!" Someone voting Green or whatever will be very likely to choose the Democrat candidate down the list of choice before the GOP candidate. When the votes are tallied they will end up with more votes with a ranked choice system than they'd have with the current system.
The real reason why this won't happen is if the GOP have a majority since it is very much against their interests.
Right wing people tend to be subservient and just fall in line and vote Republican. People on the left tend to be less pragmatic
People are always saying this, but is there actually evidence that it's true? The Libertarian Party regularly gets more votes than the Greens, so if anything it seems like the opposite is true. Ross Perot got the most votes of any third party candidate in history, and in both the elections he ran in, Bill Clinton won. In 2016, Trump refused to rule out the possibility of a third party run if he didn't get the nomination, and it appeared to be a serious possibility.
I'm basing it on trends. We saw with RFK being offered whatever he wanted as soon as it looked like he was going to take more votes from Trump than Harris. He dropped out and backed Trump. While not all of his supporters might not automatically go vote for Trump (just as not all Libertarians won't pick R for their second choice) it probably helped.
The Libertarians got what? 1/3 of the votes in 2020 than they did in 2016? Seems like they're on the decline to me.
We're seeing more of a push by various internet influencers (who knows who's paying them, LOL) to push people on the left towards voting third party. And maybe I've spent too much time on lemmy, but it seems to be working. People want to vote for Cornel West or Jill Stein.
It's probably exhausting for campaign workers to have to constantly explain they shouldn't vote third party as it might result in Trump getting in. It would be far easier to say "sure I kinda like [Third Party Candidate] too, but I like [Democratic Candidate] more because blah blah blah, but the most important thing is you go out and vote!" and be fairly confident that vote will cascade down to their candidate. The whole "don't vote third party" schtick that's going on now may just result in that person not voting at all.
A lot of emphasis now is in getting turnout. If a third party candidate can energize some turnout whose votes will cascade down to the Dem candidate, that means the third parties are helping them instead of hurting them. And what people think now about how voting third party will push the Dems more towards that position would actually be true. Right now it's not true but the internet is teaching them otherwise.
It sounds like you're basing it entirely off personal experience. But your personal experience probably doesn't give you a representative cross section of Americans.
The Greens also got 1/3 of the votes in 2020 as 2016, both times being about 1/3 of the Libertarian party.
There's also, like, some pretty big rifts in the right, between the old school establishment and the MAGA crowd. There was tons of infighting over the speaker and whatnot. Trump himself was obviously controversial, and I mentioned the threat of him running third party. If Republican voters would just line up to vote for anybody, the establishment would've never allowed things to splinter to the degree they have, they'd kick people out of the party and the voters would go for whoever they offered instead. I don't see how any of that is explainable if what you're saying is true.
I feel like part of that narrative is just seeing the right run shitty candidates and seeing right wingers vote for them, but that's because the voters have different values and preferences. They still care quite a bit about the things they do care about, and break rank when they don't get their way, and much more so than people in the left do from the numbers I'm seeing.
But your personal experience probably doesn’t give you a representative cross section of Americans.
Neither does yours. The fact is that there are Democrats pushing legislation pushing to move towards Ranked Choice Voting. It's only your personal experience that leads you to believe that it's all for show.
There’s also, like, some pretty big rifts in the right, between the old school establishment and the MAGA crowd.
Yeah but they didn't form a new party did they? And I don't think the Dems want to be dependent on the GOP running another unpopular candidate in 2028. They have campaign workers that actually talk to a lot of voters so they'd know better than either of us about the cross section of Americans.
Most people don't know about legislation that has passed, forget about proposed legislation being a thing that will influence voters. So why would they bother proposing legislation they don't really want in an effort to bamboozle people who don't even know about it?
"Why would I vote for a primary party candidate who supports ranked choice voting when I can just throw my vote away on a third-party candidate that will never be elected? I've got principles!"
Falwell made himself a big deal in the GOP by getting his troops to show up at every single local Republican event with enough votes to make sure that they got everything they wanted. It started small with sheriffs and county clerks, and then Congress members.
Exactly. Anytime a small party runs a presidential campaign it's not only a waste of time but it's a waste of money and resources that could have gone to actual races that could affect actual change. Plus they help to delegitimize and demoralize the movements.
I knew a few back in college but good Lord they were naive. He was a sweet kid but one of them thought we can get rid of the military and just use mercenaries.
Want to build a viable third party for presidential elections? Start small at the city/county level and eventually you will have candidates at the state/federal level. Today's city council is tomorrow's senator/president. Does it really surprise anyone that a relatively unknown and unproven candidate outside of the two major parties doesn't get any traction in a federal election?
If only there was some kind of proven road map where countries who has been dominated by their ruling elite using the two party trick went on to form a kind of labour movement that forced a third choice on the ruling class....
I was a proud third party voter for a long time but changed my mind after watching CGPGrey’s video about first past the post. It’s not really ABOUT trying to change minds but FPTP voting rules really do mean that a two party system is bound to very basic human psychology.
Some of these third party people could get elected to the senate if they tried, but have to try for the top job with no experience because their ego can't take that they don't know everything.
I could get elected to senate probably, if I was willing to spend fifteen years doing local and state office first. Ain't nobody got that kind of time I got hospital bills
Tbf, they have before. Ron Paul for instance was a Libertarian who ran as a Republican and won, and they do run for local offices a lot (at least the Libertarians, never seen a local Green on the ballot), they just also put forth a presidential candidate because if they can get like 5% or 15% of the vote (I can't remember which) they get federal funding and have to get included in the next debates instead of the debates only being R vs D.
Idk about the other third parties, but the Libertarians are doing exactly that.
If you can create a successful grassroots political party in an environment where your party members and constituents are constantly attacked, murdered, bombed, jailed, tortured, votes faked, votes destroyed, and vote miscounts, you can definitely pull it off in the USA.
It took Pakistan only 20 years to cause a collapse of their corrupt 2 party system and challenge the military dictatorship. People never believed PTI would mount any sort of challenge, but they did by building a solid populist movement, despite facing all of the above.
The "you must vote the lesser evil" is a fallacy that both parties in the USA perpetuate in an attempt to convince you to believe 3rd party voting is a waste of time.
You can't just sit back and complain about the rigged system like "but muh first past the poll voting" as if either Democrats or Republicans will change the system in any way to make it easier for their rivals.
This is exactly why I dislike the Democratic party in particular so much. They are a corporate monolith that pretends to care about your leftist demands by handing out pennies worth of change to get your vote, then the second they refuse to actually significantly change something you demand, they have the audacity to blame you, the voter, for not sucking up to their shitty policies when they inevitably lose the election.
Current case in point: "There is no genocide in Gaza, and we believe we can win without our constituents because our opponent is a mentally insane baby ".
We need to demand approval choice voting. Every time we hear anything about third parties in this country, we need to use it as a launch pad to tall about approval choice voting
I mean if you don’t care if one party or the other wins you could do this, but that just means you are one or both of the following:
Don’t have a sense of empathy for those who would be hurt by a Trump victory.
Are personally privileged enough to not be affected personally. If you live in the USA and feel both parties do the same thing you must be.
Imagine all those people whose lives would be worsened in the USA and all around the world by a Trump victory. Don’t you care? Even the people of Palestine would be worse off and they are already suffering beyond either of our comprehensions.
We had Trump and the world did not end for you. If you live in the USA that makes you one of the privileged. I know many whose world did end. Good for you that you were not affected. But have empathy for those who where.
We had Biden and much harm reduction was done. The downward slope was lessened. Imagine if Trump got a 4th Supreme Court justice! Imagine if Biden was not there to undo the explicitly harmful policies that hurt less privileged people. Biden winning increased in a notable and serious way those who are the least privileged.
It may be true that the American quality of life has gone down. But voting 3rd party only makes it go down faster. If you just don’t care go for it. But the mathematics of FPTP systems mean that voting 3rd party only hurts your interests.
Biden did not act with empathy when he gave supplies to Israel. But Trump will act with glee and encouragement when he would give supplies to Israel.
I encourage everyone to vote with empathy and think of the least privileged when voting everywhere.
If you are interested in the topic of moral philosophy I have a few book recommendations. I appreciate that you are passionate. I just think an empathy driven ethics is the way to go.
The primaries are over. The risk of Trump is too high and people spreading 3rd Party ideas right now many be trying to demotivate progressives from voting for Harris. I mean, I'm not a big fan of Harris, but I'll still be voting for her over Trump.
It seems like Harris turning half Republican and supporting a genocide is what's demotivating progressives from voting for her and people spreading 3rd party ideas is a symptom of that.
To answer your question, I joined Lemmy when it was a niche open source project then left because nothing was happening until the mass migration happened
"I am concerned about the genocide in Palestine, so I am going to take actions that will clearly make things much worse for the people in Palestine because that is the ethical thing to do!"
It really shows that feeling morally superior is more importantly to them than actually getting results. Harris has some genocide, so let's help Donald "Finish the Job" Trump win and have lots of genocide. My protest vote sure helped the Palestinians!
Never said they would. But realistically you have to acknowledge that a third party candidate has no chance of winning this election. If your only concern is Palastine then not voting for Harris actively makes things worse for the people in Palastine, even if Harris is not doing enough to help them. Your options are bad, or worse.
If you're trying to build support for third party candidates for future elections then don't give me any bullshit about Palastine, because that will not help them in any way.
And this criticism of 'the greens only show up every 4 years' is in bad faith. The greens run in other elections as well, you just only hear about the presidential elections because that's the only time they get some media attention.
This list has a bunch of school board members, city councillors, even a mayor on it. They do run in local elections, and even win sometimes.
And this criticism of 'the greens only show up every 4 years' is in bad faith.
No, it's really not. The Mayor of Galesburg, IL, a town of 30.000 is the highest office any green politician holds in the US. This is fucking ridiculous.
By their own admission, only 130 Greens are currently in office in highly influential positions such as Zoning Board of Appeals Alternate or Cemetery Trust Fund Committee. This party is a fucking joke. And that's the party whose presidential candidate accepts an invitation from Putin.
Noooo you must enjoy voting for our designated ghoul and voice your full throated support every day until November or else it's basically a vote for Trump. Also, you can't ask us to change any platforms whatsoever cause that's divisive and a vote for Trump.
It's really astounding to see how quickly Democratic sycophants mimic the MAGA folks they mock on the right. These are the same people that were telling those of us who wanted Biden to drop out that we were all secret Trump supporters paid by the Russians even though it was clear he was going to lose.
This is the same tone set by the people who whined that we were refusing to vote for Biden and oh look now Biden isn’t in the race anymore because we refused to accept him.
Keep accepting the one candidate that they spoon in front of us without asking if we actually want that one
Gore won the vote. The election was stolen by the supreme court and Roger Stone it was not the fault of a 3rd party at all if the law had been followed gore would have been given Florida
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
Its applying leverage to the party saying meet these criteria or get spoiled. It's basically a union for protest votes, and it's effective. Which makes it extremely important in the current two party system because it's the only way certain issues will get addressed.
Yeah absolutely how can I ever vote against war and imperialism if both parties are in favor of giving endless money to defense contractors?
You're basically saying I have to force myself to vote for the American military death machine in every single election or I'm a bad person and maybe you have a point but if you have to make that argument I think you should have a long look in the mirror
Democrats will only appeal to people not voting for them already. People showing them they won't vote for Genocide you already changes policy.
When the pressure gets too high Democrats will cave. If they want your vote make them work for it never let them fearmonger you into giving it for free. Jill Stein 2024 baby.
There will never be an acceptable time to vote third party according to liberals. Unless you're fine with an infinite state of groveling towards people in power. If we can't even push them left on genocide when it could cost the election, we can't move them left on anything. The status quo is fine for people who have the resources to deal with it and people not effected by Police brutality and other negative effects.
And even if the candidate wins, then what? They have no say in Congress. It's the House of Reps and the Senate that passes legislation. Your new third party candidate can only choose to sign or to veto bills passed by the House and Senate.
Do you apply this same logic to Trump winning the election or are presidents only this powerless when they have a D next to their name and are being criticized for supporting abhorrent legislation?
I'm not making sense? You just stated that congress has all the power while now arguing that Trump would have all the power because he's "the leader of the party." That doesn't make sense as you can't have it both ways unless you're just trying to spread misinformation.
Seriously? Ok one more attempt. Trump is the leader of the republican party. The people in the republican party selected him as their leader. I don't know how to make it any clearer but I'll try with a tiny fib: Trump is the republican party. The republican party is Trump.
Trump tells his party "hey write up this legislation, do it because I'm the leader of the party that you are in". Notice that part "because I'm the leader of the party that you are in". That's not "because I am president", it's "because I'm the leader of the party that you are in". And by and large, the republican party will do that. They will listen to their party leader (the one they selected) and write up the legislation, try to pass it in the House of reps, try to pass it in the senate, and then it will land on Trumps desk.
To be more specific, the party will meet, they will discuss what they want to do, listening heavily to what the president/leader wants to do because it was his "vision" for america that got them elected, then write up legislation.
A third party candidate does not have party members in the house or senate that will do that.
If that doesn't make sense to you, you have some reading to do. I think I'm out.
Progress is slow. Start with killing the popularity of the second party/party you absolutely don't align with/party that will move the needle away from your party first.
All elections have consequences. I know that Americans like to be dramatic (especially on Lemmy, Reddit is far more tame in this regard), but voting for someone that wants to promote policies that you support is how those policies are promoted.
I say this time and time again on here, but America isn't special. Many countries have two main parties, but while third parties don't always see power, they maintain Influence everywhere. Hell, you can argue that the Tea Party, Brexit, Irish Unification, MAGA, Immigration reform in Germany, all of this is due to influence outside of the main parties.
I personally care because most of my family is American and because Canadian politics often echo what's going on in the U.S. Pierre Polievre wouldn't be seeing as much success if he didn't have Trump's culture war nonsense to use as inspiration. A lot of people outside of America still care very much about U.S. politics because it does have an effect on global affairs.
Because the policies those people put into effect have very real consequences for citizens. Especially when one candidate is openly hostile towards significant marginalized groups in society and wishes to bring them harm. This isn't a team sport. This is a struggle for survival for many who stand to lose a lot of rights and freedoms for simply being who they were born as.
So yes, we should care who wins. Those two people are your options. Third party is not.
I've never voted for a major party presidential candidate in my life. It has never cost anyone anything, because I used to live in a deep red state and now live in a deep blue state. There's a better chance of helping a candidate hit thresholds that would qualify them for things like campaign funding, then there is of Tennessee or Illinois being the pivotal swing state. The vast majority of Americans are in similar situations, there's only a handful of states where your presidential vote matters at all.
Despite this, and the fact that I've voted for Democrats down ballot, liberals hate me, and are always trying to fight me over it. Why? Because the presidential race is the only thing anybody cares about. For all the countless, identical debates over the presidential race, I've seen virtually no discussion on here of other elections. Culturally, your take on the presidential race is how your political identity is defined. That cultural tendency is so powerful that it can even bleed into foreign countries.
The more people focus on my presidential voting behavior, which has no potential to affect anything, the more it reaffirms that such behavior is important. The reason that people care so much about my vote is not because they care about the outcome, it's because they want me to display a sign of loyalty, to bend the knee, to conform to their norms. But if everyone's going to treat it as an expression of identity, then, all else being equal regarding the outcome, it would be better to define myself according to what I actually believe. The fact that people get big mad over someone voting third party even in an extremely solid red or blue state is all the more reason to do it. My vote doesn't affect your life at all since it's totally irrelevant to the outcome, so stop obsessing over what amounts to a personal decision.
These snarky jabs are missing the point. I'm not a major party prodigal son casting a spite vote, I am actually not interested in either of their platforms and want to force them slowly over time to change.
That's not how it works. You want to force the party left then build movement from the ground up. Go out on the corner and collect signatures to change your voting system to ranked choice instead first past the post. Run for local office as a socialist or green.
The fact that all you have to do is once every 4 years push a button should tell you that it's not the right thing to do to effect change.
Presidential elections are not about voting for a perfect candidate, very few elections are ever about that. They are about putting someone in power you are most capable of negotiating with. The person that is both capable of winning and closest to your ideals.
It does actually work that way, at least sometimes. If a major party loses enough votes to a third party, it forces them to adjust their platform at least enough to win back would-be voters.
Whenever third party voters honestly tell people that they are voting third party because it closely aligns with their values, and that neither major party is even slightly compatible, major party apologists and cheerleaders come out of the woodwork to saying actually you're one-of-us, you just don't know it yet, and if you just vote hard enough for my candidate then things will get better. It's been over a hundred years of least dirty of two shirts, and it's not getting better.
Every four years it's "the most important election of our lives", and if we're not scared into voting D it'll be the death of Democracy itself. Sorry, I'm not a buyer. My state had a double-digit R majority in 2020, it's not in my interest to vote for a candidate I don't want.
The candidates themselves aren't really that important, they've shown themselves to be chameleons whose positions shift as it's convenient and necessary. Authoritarian self-styled strongman Donald Trump felt compelled to show up at the Libertarian National Convention only to get booed when he tried to woo voters, so there must be at least some recognition of third parties' interests.
Insane levels of cope from the party that's suing states to remove the "unviable" third parties to protect their genocide candidate's chances at beating someone who is literally incapable of forming basic sentences
Voting for a third party, like trying to walk through a third door, is an indication of intent. Going through the door would be getting them elected to office.
And yes, supporting a party would be endorsing whatever evil policies the party supports—but voting isn’t an act of endorsement. Nobody knows how you vote; it has no meaning as a personal statement. Its only meaning is in the differential effects of the policies of the two candidates your vote decides between, in the most likely scenario in which it is the deciding vote.
You absolutely should support and endorse a party you believe in, but don’t mistake voting in a presidential election for either of those things.
endorse | verb [with object]
to declare one's public approval or support of.
Your vote is expressly not public—you’re prohibited from keeping or sharing any proof of your vote. In part this is to prevent people from using their votes as signals of anything outside the immediate issue.
There aren’t only two candidates.
In the event that your vote actually decides the election, it does so by giving the winner one more vote than the runner-up; at that point those are the only two candidates at issue. And that’s the only event in which your vote matters.
Spin it as much as you want. Anyone supporting, endorsing, or voting for a party with blood in his hand fueling a genocide is directly complicit in the crime
Go ahead and feel morally superior as your protest vote enables someone way worse to hurt way more people. All the women dying of ectopic pregnancies or sepsis from stillbirths they cannot abort are on you. The GOP will let Russia have Ukraine where they will rape and murder anyone who resists, and they will unconditionally increase funding for Israel's genocidal land grab.
And you will think, "that's not my fault, I voted for the not evil one."
But that's not true, because you could have voted for the person who is willing to negotiate on those things, but you chose to feel better about yourself instead of actually help anyone.
Supporting and voting a party complicit in a genocide is not just a "feeling". Dozens of kids are being murdered daily in gaza, this is already the worst scenario.
All the women dying of ectopic pregnancies or sepsis from stillbirths they cannot abort are on you.
Wrong, these are on people voting for the red and blue party which for a century have been cycling in power promoting the same authoritarian politics.
The GOP will let Russia have Ukraine where they will rape and murder anyone who resists
I encourage you to read about the cold war and check how many military bases the us has spread all over the world. I also encourage you to read about ukraine government corruption and their authoritarian measures and lastly i encourage you to check who usa and russia are in partnership with.
And if Trump wins because of your "morally superior" choice you'll have only succeeded in helping Israel exterminate them faster. There will not be any discussions about whether to pause or halt shipments of arms.
This post was reported for disinformation. To me this post reads like an opinion and hyperbole.
If we do assume that the post is making a factual claim; I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if voting has ever been used to claim that someone is complicit in a crime. Im open to being pointed to evidence.
All this anti-third party logic fails as soon as the goal is outcomes regardless of which political party ends up taking credit. Just 5% of the GE puts another platform on every ballot in the next cycle. And, that immediately places immense pressure upon the duopoly.
It's so simple there's now a massive amount of state-sponsored propaganda trying to prevent too many from figuring it out.
The presence of minor parties on the ballot doesn’t “place immense pressure on the duopoly”—it just tips the balance toward one or the other component of the duopoly. Which is why either party will actively encourage it when it suits them.
Edit: There’s a historically-proven method of forming new parties in the U.S., which is why we don’t still have the Whigs or the Federalists. In the past, distinct factions would form within one of the dominant parties, until the parent party imploded and two or more new parties emerged. That process of internal fission was suppressed after the Civil War, and that’s how the “duopoly” now maintains its power.
Of course, a different voting system would serve the same purpose (arguably better), and the suppression of alternate voting methods is also duopolistic. But the existence of minor parties under the current system just reenforces the duopoly by channeling dissent away from internal factions.
The problem is that any third party that manages to eventually displace a member of the duopoly immediately replaces that party in the new duopoly.
Because the duopoly is a result of First Past the Post (FPTP) voting. As long as we use FPTP the duopoly will persist, just with different parties filling the two roles.
Anything short of switching away from FPTP for some form of Rank Choice is going to be a band-aid, mere temporary relief, and not even a very good one.
Which is the point. Voting third party won't fix the system, certainly not at the presidential level. So work with what you have now, and work towards something better in the areas where it's actually possible.
There you go again caring about which political party takes credit. Repeating the same fallacy over and over again only works on idiots, meaning the vast majority of humanity. See: The Engineering of Consent (1947), The Manufacturing of Consent (1988).
If it's easier to reason with third party voters than trump voters, it seems like the logical thing to do.
EDIT: also worth pointing out the difference between "attacking" trump voters as individuals, because they have proven themselves to truly be deplorable, and "attacking" third party voting as a decision.
Democrats have done far more to reason with Republicans this election cycle than they have with third party voters on the left who at least don't want genocide but know that the duopoly is never going to budge on their undying support of Israel. Let alone other actually progressive policies.
On top of that, I'd say there's some nuance - nationally, you'll see Democrats reasoning with Republicans, targeting the non-maga conservatives.
However here on Lemmy, there are very few conservatives as well as a disproportionate number of third party folks, so you'll see a lot more discussion centered around third parties.
There's not much reasoning going on. Only dishonest claims about how Democrats actually stand for things they don't stand for such as "Biden is actually the biggest ally of Palestinians", and screaming insults.
For what its worth I agree. The Democrats are killing themselves from within. Say what you want about Trump but they are smart enough to target the moderate crowd. Meanwhile Harris is busy dodging hard questions about her political stance. The liberal media likes to brag about how good the Democrats are doing but the reality is they have lost a lot of ground and Harris is too far left for most of the swing voters. People have not been happy with the way Biden is running things and it shows.
I also find it funny that Harris is adapting the Trump strategy. She is increasingly responding with insults and slander instead of being a cool collected alternative to Trump. Her association with Biden is also not doing her favors and many people just don't know her well enough to support her.
I suppose Lemmy isn't the place for political discussion. Lemmy as a whole is far left and it shows. This might be a shock but social media isn't a good representation of the bigger political views. If you go on a platform dominated by the right you will end up with people calling you far left because you don't believe in racism.
Democrats would rather get really mad at people who don't want to support Genocide than just stop supporting Genocide.
If Democrats truly believe Trump is the next Hitler you'd think they would try to appeal to voters a little harder. Maybe the Democratic party is not as scared of Trump as their fearmongering suggests.
This comment got reported. And while trolling is not allowed. Attacking an individual is also not allowed. So I'm not sure if attacking them for being a troll is allowed.
If you think a post is trolling (ie: just trying to stir up anger rather than trying to make an argument for something), please report it. If you think a poster is serial trolling please point it out in the report.
I've edited it to make it more factual and perhaps less emotive by replacing the phrase "republican troll" with "republican pretending to be left leaning" and provided a link to where they replied "cope" when I pointed this out to them previously. I don't know if you can see the reply, it won't expand for me, but I promise you that's what it said. I don't know whether you count arguing in bad faith just to persuade your political opponents not to vote as trolling, but I certainly feel it's not good behaviour and worth pointing out to folks who are taken in.
Thank you, I really appreciate the effort to tone things down.
I want people to have the freedom be passionate in their comments and posts, and I think the community rules do a good job of allow the freedom to argue passionately. The rules do aim to avoid attacks against people themselves and groups of people.
So, while toning things down is not the primary goal, when things get aggressive it's harder for everyone to avoid ad hominem attacks.
Only in order to pursuade folks not to vote democratic (which is bizarre because Trump and his party are pretty rabidly on favour of "finish them" outcomes in Gaza).
Third parties are mathematically impossible until we ditch first past the post voting:
https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
We need our vote to be a list, not a checkbox.
This is the way. It is possible and unlikely to have a third party win under the right conditions, like with how the Republican Party became a national party after Lincoln was elected as a third party candidate. But ultimately there will always only be two parties with the outdated FPTP voting method. If only George Washington knew about and pushed for a better voting system than FPTP.
I don't think they really existed yet in his era. You've got to remember that Australia, a much younger country, invented the secret ballot. It was known as the "Australian Ballot" for a long time.
Better systems existed but to your point, they were not well known.
Leaders today, with access to Wikipedia if not researchers with Nobel prizes, do NOT have this excuse.
Well yes, obviously. The issue with today is that the incumbency of the system makes it hard to change
In 1294-1621 the election of the Pope used Approval voting. Venice also used it.
The election of the Pope required secret ballot since 1621. And the concept existed since Ancient Greece and was used in elections and courts of Roman Republic.
IMO, it's not the full story to say the Republican party was a third party that year. The previous opposition to the Democrats had a rift and came apart. I think you are underselling what "the right conditions" are. This is more like a new party filling a void.
That year the Democrats themselves (regressives as this was well before Southern Strategy) split into two. Running both a candidate for "states' rights" style slavery and another for "fuck you, slavery everywhere" style slavery.
All it takes is a bunch of celebrities endorsing third parties and it's done. At some point in your lifetime you will probably see a third party winning in the usa and it will simply happen with media and celebrities redirecting everyone vote. It happens all the time in other countries: people get tired of the local rulers and to keep protests and disorder at bay the government through mass media redirects attentions to a new and fresh party that already got bribed and corrupted by the ruling class.
In Australia government funding is distributed to political parties based on the number of first preference votes they get as well so even if your first choice doesn't get in, you still helped them by putting them first.
FPTP is not real democracy for this reason.
I like CGP Grey and all, but power dynamics is an important aspect of poltics. An aspect he completely ignores in favour of spreadsheet thinking.
Yeah so proportional representation systems kinda suck. Israel has one and it ended up with a conservative party making concessions to far right crazies to form a coalition. Sure minorities are in the parliament, but they have zero power because the only thing that matters is the backroom negotiations between parties to form a coalition.
The biggest problem with FPTP is the name. Really we should call it a community representation system (which is what it is) and call proportional representation system a "party coalition" system, which is what it actually is. In a party coalition system the negotiations between party leaders to form coalitions is all that matters, everyone else is just there to fill seats which are owned by the parties.
In a community representation system each seat is own by a representative of the community who can vote against their party or leave their party. Parties are incentivized to keep the community leaders happy or they could lose seats.
If you want third parties, it's better to go with a ranked choice system. That gives people more choice over who represents their community, and allow them to have compromise options in case their top choice doesn't get enough votes. You don't actually have to give parties full ownership of the seats (making them redundant) to have more options.
I also generally prefer a Condorcet Method (ranked choice, single winner) over mixed-member-proportional, but either one would be a massive improvement over our current system.
I'll take Approval voting, even.
That's bc he explains each concept mostly in isolation of others, leaving other concepts for separate videos themselves. But in e.g. Rules for Rulers, he very much discusses power dynamics. And I thought he had another one - in addition to the more mathematical one - illustrating FPTP using the animal kingdom, where technically people might assume one thing to be true, but based on power dynamics in practice it never is.
So watch Rules for Rulers yet if you haven't - it may change literally everything about your understanding, as it did mine.
Edit - references:
FPTP explanained mathematically
gerrymandering explained separately
rules for Rulers, outlining necessary considerations involved with any path forward - i.e. it works against anyone and especially those who ignore this principle
Yeah I've seen all of these videos before. Problem is, these aren't isolated concepts. There are very specific power dynamics within a proportional representation system that aren't the same as the power dynamics in a community representation system. He doesn't go into those details in the rules for rulers videos, only the broad concept of democracy is mentioned. He only goes into a some math on the FPTP video but doesn't discuss the differences power dynamics for those different systems.
Basically in a community representation system (called FPTP by people trying to make it sound arbritrary an unfair) the power flows up from the communities. In a proportional representation system the power flows down from the party leadership.
Considering the "rules for rulers" video it seems CGP Grey thinks all government has to be top down, so he doesn't seem to have even considered the possibility of power flowing upwards from a community. This is what happens in the system he thinks is bad, so I'd say he hasn't adequately considered everything about the subject.
We don't actually elect rulers we elect people to represent our communities. Sure they're usually part of a party but because we elect representatives, not parties, that representative has the option of leaving the party if it serves the interests of the community they represent. Since parties can lose seats between elections they have to listen to the the elected representatives (community leaders) to avoid losing seats. People in a community put pressure on their representative, the reps but pressure on the party leadership, power flows upwards from the people.
Proportional representation only seems better if you think as CGP does and believe we can only be ruled over and we need to find a better way to select rulers. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of representative democracy.
It seems you are mixing the concepts of voting systems and candidate selection. FPP nor FPTP should not sound scary. As a voting systems, FPP works well enough more often than many want to admit. The name just describes it in more detail: First Preference Plurality.
Every voting system is as bottom-up or top-down as the candidate selection process. The voting system itself doesn't really affect whether it is top down or bottom up. Requiring approval/voting from the current rulers would be top-down. Only requiring ten signatures on a community petition is more bottom up.
The voting systems don't care about the candidate selection process. Some require precordination for a "party", but that could also be a party of 1. A party of 1 might not be able to get as much representation as one with more people: but that's also the case for every voting system that selects the same number of candidates.
Voting systems don't even need to be used for representation systems. If a group of friends are voting on where to eat, one problem might be selecting the places to vote on, but that's before the vote. With the vote, FPP might have 70% prefer pizza over Indian food, but the Indian food vote might still win because the pizza voters had another first choice. Having more candidates often leads to minority rule/choice, and that's not very good for food choice nor community representation.
He seems to think like a mathematician or philosopher and enjoyed considering each of those items separately, in isolation from one another - plus as a YouTuber, he needs to release moar content, moar often, so multiple videos helps him maintain his existence that way as opposed to a single, larger video, especially on a complex topic that since it is >1 minute long, the vast majority of people are not going to watch anyway.:-P
But anyway, if he's already mathematically proved certain things about e.g. ranked-choice, and how it differs from whatever else, then why should he bother going further into the weeds, that the vast majority of people don't care the tiniest bit about? After all, a look at basically every election ever, especially recently, reveals that the common people know next to nothing about how the system works. e.g. people voting against Hillary Clinton in 2016, either by voting 3rd party, or switching to the "Never Hillary" movement to actively vote for Trump, but then being shocked - shocked I tell you! SHOOKETH! - when he won. So if we can't figure out that 1+1=2, then differential calculus, much less simple algebra, is going to be beyond us (collectively) as well.
So, I took it as not that he refused to consider those other possibilities, just that he was focusing his description to explain one thing in isolation of other concepts, as much as possible at least. e.g. regardless of whether he should have been talking about (or naming it as) FPTP, that's what he was aiming to do, so that's what he did.
About the Rules for Rulers I think similarly as above but also: the "rulers" there aren't necessarily the ones in charge, as is true for the monarchies & totalitarian regimes, but rather the "voters" who put those people in charge. In that formulation, why should the non-voters (e.g. literal children, people who are mentally disabled, etc.) have power over & above that of the voters, i.e. the responsible "rulers"?
Although that is exactly what always ends up happening... eventually, in any such system. Imagine a person who votes, individually, but then also is responsible for gerrymandering a district of lets say a million people. So they should have had power equal to 1/1000000, though instead they overturned the decisions of those million people and single-handedly altered the election, FAR in excess of their individual voting power. They cannot overturn the collective weight of a full million voters all speaking with a single unified voice... but they could make a vote for e.g. 1/10th vs. 9/10ths end up with the former rather than the latter being in charge, which is pretty damn powerful (it doesn't have to be "perfect", it just has to work - possibly in conjunction with other things like removing certain classes of people as voters). So here, irl rather than in pure theory in isolation of irl considerations, "rulers" end up NOT being the voters, but rather those in charge b/c they are willing to cheat the system, to keep themselves in charge or at least others exactly like them, using non-voting schemes. i.e. it is the True Rulers(TM) who are "in charge" rather than the voting ones, who were put into place by non-voting systems, so the entire system gets turned upon its head and does if not 100% then still effectively the opposite of what it was originally intended to - that is, it ignores/overturns votes rather than uses them to determine the outcomes of elections.
So if we, the aspiring rulers i.e. voters, wish to actually rule, then we need to know what we are up against. And if others cheat... well then that does not mean that we have to as well, but we should at least be aware that that is what is going on!?! To some degree at least, even if not 100%, hence it is "biased" and "unfair" and "rigged". That is what I took from those videos, collectively.
Switzerland has a good system, just copy it. (Yes, not the same country, size difference and so on and on but its still a thousand times better than the US system)
If you're going to use a genocidal cult as your counter-example to democracy, why not just talk about the nazis?
Who's we?
The working class I guess? Certainly no one with power.
Americans. "We" already have preferential voting.
Math doesn't decide what people vote, they are free to vote anything they want. Parties don't automatically side with each others because another is most likely to win. This video is rooted in the mindset that politics and elections are a horse race between left and right.
What's preventing third parties from winning it's not math but the propaganda and the power of the red and blue party. The ruling parties didn't become this powerful mathematically. Over decades and centuries the ruling class paved their way and ensured their power with violence and repression.
If third parties aren't mathematically impossible, where are all members of third party during midterms? Local elections? The work it takes to make real lasting change is done down ballot, where are they at those times? Why do they only creep up during presidential races? The above analogy may not be perfect, but it's pretty damned close... but we could also compare third party to all the lazy animals in the story of the little red hen...
In case your not familiar with the children's story...
The government spend billions of dollars to make sure third parties are nowhere to be seen. This post being evidence. You got a fascist party and one involved in a genocide yet you see warnings about not voting for anyone else.
It doesn't take a whole lot of money to run for city council, local officials, sherif, alderman. It takes a bit, but not millions to run for state government positions. Are you saying the federal government is quashing local and state third parties? That is where you make your sweeping electoral reforms for federal elections. Why don't we ever hear about them making moves in those races? Where are they when I go to vote for my city council? My county commissioners? Are you telling me the federal government is coming down and removing them from ballots?
That's a pretty serious accusation, and I'd love to see some sources on that, because I'm with you all the way if that's the case.
But when you've got someone who was wined and dined by an impotent dictator, and a half dozen of his cronies and yes men coming in and trying to split the vote for the best chance of preventing a take over by the impotent dictator's choice clown... and then suddenly you've got people toting her banner when she's been largely silent the past 3.5 years... it kind of makes you wonder, or it should... assuming you've got more than 3 braincells reenacting the DVD screen saver.
Because mass media are own by government and rich people. If you try to compete with them they take you down
I see a few bits of information about it happening at the presidential election level, but I'm not finding anything at the state and local level. Can you provide some sources on that?
No, no, THIS time protest-voting to allow fascism will work to usher in a real left-wing movement in this country, promise! /s
Yeah, fascist government are known for doing some voting reforms after all
That is not at all what the comment you replied to meant. Anyone with reading comprehension would know that.
Splitting the vote allows an opening for fascists to take control with a minority of support, like they do.
Can you see that you're arguing against fictitious strawmen? You seem to be operating under the delusion that for all the dumb normies who have "bought into" the existing two-party system, politics is just a game that they play without understanding. You've reduced them all to NPC's who lack the capacity to reason; obviously their only motivation could be mindless conformity to their "team".
Is it your contention that it doesn't matter what party controls the branches of government, because they're both the same? While this is factually inaccurate, it would at least be in line with the actions you're advocating. Speaking of which, how exactly do you imagine a "protest" vote would deny the subsequently elected government legitimacy? What force and effect do you foresee that action producing? Because anyone with a working knowledge of our electoral system can tell you that the only discernable result will be the empowerment of the minority party, which in this case seeks a fascist overthrow of our democratic system.
What you're doing here is applying shallow, childish logic to a complex and nuanced problem, while pretending to have some high-minded motivations which—if they exist at all—clearly haven't been thought through.
google bullshit asymmetry and then use fewer word when talking to bads
Once again, severe reading comprehension issues. Got it.
"the brain bin" has a hole in it.
But but, building a real third party from the ground up in local elections and/or changing our voting system from first past the post takes a lot of time and real effort. That's a lot of hard work. It's a lot harder than just showing up to one election every 4 years and casting a vote that makes you feel like you're special and smarter than everyone else.
Yeah, I've recently talked with my therapist about this choice between very slow, very hard work and sitting on my butt dreaming. And about the idea that it's better to avoid action than to act, if I'm not sure I'll act right. And how it apparently came to me in my teens, when I've been doing martial arts for some time, girls would smile at me often, and in general I thought I might be too stupid and happy and there should be something smarter. That 'smarter' was, of course, just another teenage idea of being wise and not like everyone else. Fucked up my life for a decade.
By the way, people who'd be removed and theoretical and talk about some imagined third movement created via some magic other than voting - would be called 'idiots' in ancient Athens. Because they are on the side of an idea, not real politics. Then it became a rude word.
Any such decision to try and find a smart shortcut, or that it's better to wait and see how it goes instead of sweating, - are all wrong and are exactly what propaganda works for. Being honest is smarter than being dishonest. And voting for the party most fitting your ideals is smarter than for the lesser evil.
I honestly tried to read and understand this but it really sounds like a bunch of nonsense.
Tell that to all the people who will be hurt if that protest vote enables someone worse.
Voting for the party that is consciously using the other one as a boogeyman will enable someone worse with no doubt. They are both worse.
And before the actual ballots are being cast, the public opinion sending right signals to Dems would reduce that risk.
That is the most selfish possible way to approach life. You're not the main character, other people's lives are at stake. Voting a specific way just to make yourself feel better knowing you are endangering others by doing so is not some morally superior choice.
Risking letting someone win who conspired to overthrow an election and who has promised his supporters that if they elect him this time they won't have to vote ever again. Selfish naive children. Fuck Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democratic machine, at least you'll be able to vote again and you might actually get to negotiate for things that make people's lives better.
You are. You are also responsible for your own choices whether you admit it or not.
If taking responsibility is selfish, then selfishness is a virtue.
They are already threatening you with Trump if you don't vote for them and don't want to compromise. So about that "you'll be able to vote again" - I think that's true, but since that threat works, that'll likely be the same kind of choice over and over. When you agree to get owned for protection, you usually don't get owned just once.
For fuck's sake, are you 16?
How can a grown person be that arrogant without knowing shit about game theory?
People who proport to support Palestine, but advocate actions that allow a win for Donald "I'm the best king of Israel ever" Trump and his "Finish them" Israeli bomb-signing Republican party aren't being honest with the people they're debating with.
It is utterly unprincipled republicanism when people PRETEND to care and then advocate allowing the fascist KKK racist maniac genocidal republican party to win.
This post was reported. I think the objection would be to the second paragraph where it sounds like you are making a claim about the character of the person.
We want this to be an inviting place where people can share what they are passionate about. Everyone is free to attack each other's opinions and stances. However, there are rules against attacking individuals and groups of people.
Not only is it against the rules but there are much more effective methods of arguing. Ad hominem attacks are poor at persuasion.
Do you mind rewriting the second paragraph to focus on the arguments made in the prior comment, rather than the character of the person?
"I'm just asking questions!"
Yet another .ml user pushing bad takes.
You asked in bad faith.
You reap what you sow.
I don't have "a guy" I'm just not a naive child.
No, but it takes a child to feel morally superior when they enabled people to hurt others because the other option was imperfect.
None of that has anything to do with the topic at hand.
It's my choice to make whether that is true.
That's not how reality works, I'm afraid.
That is exactly how subjective reality works. Everything is interconnected, so whether something is relevant to some subject is purely a matter of choice.
Except some people of questionable intelligence and culture consider their choice on that matter more important than that of others.
except that you could end up with a 3rd entrance by doing that ... eventually
No you won't.
But if you put the door in while building the house (local and primary elections) you'll have installed it at the right time.
I think you'd have brain damage way before you get to that point
so not only would you have an extra door you'd still be smarter than people voting 3rd party in a first past the post system. Win/Win
Depends on how cheap the drywall is.
You may avoid brain damage, but your get cancer form the dust on the way through.
Especially if you ram that not-door long, hard, deep, and strong enough, really get up in there and penetrate that wall. If you run out of steam you could even switch to an electric appliance, but in that case be gentle (though not too gentle...).
Um.... I'm not sure where this is going, and at this point I'm afraid to continue? 😔
I'm here for it
Vote me again, daddy!
You'll get a boatload of spoiler effect elections until people start voting tactically again. Third parties need to start locally and not participate in the presidential elections for a long time.
There is a path to voter reform by creating hung parliament and require voter reform in a coalition agreement. Once dominant running for governor or a senator becomes possible.
Primary elections are how parties change. Primary elections are how the Republican party became what it is today. They are often the highest-leverage vote you can cast if you're in a solid district.
Yup. People don't realize there is already a not horrible approximation of runoff voting that still avoids the spoiler effect.
And just look at what happened when Sanders realized that. He went from being a meme about how nobody watches C-SPAN to one of the more influential politicians on the Left.
Well I'd say it's still pretty bad with the super delegates and such. But yeah it's runoff system of sorts and people should pay more attention to it.
But a lot of the "system is broken" angst comes from people being not happy over who the majority of people vote for. But that's just democracy, baby.
But the Electoral College, yeah that shit is broken.
Primaries are still subject to spoiler effects and such.
In my very blue state this year where the top two in the primary go on to the general, there was a local position which had a whole bunch of well qualified Democrats vs just a couple of Republicans. (Incumbent not running)
The dem vote was split enough that we very nearly had just the two Republicans in the general. Like less than 60 votes away.
And there are scenarios under runoff voting where similar can occur (e.g. two seats, 2 right wing, 4 left wing) and is where the "election theory" aspect of things that certain folk are still bitching about (because that is the most important thing to have happened in the past 8 years, clearly). The party needs to take the results of the primary and downselect who actually runs to avoid splitting their own vote.
No voting system is perfect. But people should really understand what we have and what their NEED improves and fails to improve rather than just insisting "new is better".
Remind me who won in 2016? How do you think all those Bernie supporters felt about the election that was still very much influenced by FPTP dynamics.
Primary elections aren’t democratic either (see party delegates). I feel like people who say this are rarely politically engaged in their communities. Same with the people who say to get involved in local city politics to make change.
Ultimately you’re supporting a facist system that is historically atrocious and currently financially supporting a genocide almost singlehandedly but go ahead and keep telling people that the best way to maintain some semblance of moral character is to vote in this sham.
Too bad the dems skipped the primary and just anointed their candidate.
You'd need to grow the third party / greens by having them become a viable party in local elections and state elections first. The greens have failed to do that. Which means they have no chance except to spoil the election.
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I have high hopes but my logical side says they can just be pandering like any of the other politicians: they know people support it, they know it will fail. They look good for backing it even tho they aren't worried about changing the status quo either
IIRC two states and several major cities have also successfully implemented rank choice, and in every case it's been because of Democrats.
As more and more local governments make the change, it'll become more popular and gain more support on the national level.
.
My point (i.e. the "high hopes" part) is that this sounds legit and awesome. I do my best to be an optimist, but I have been burned way to many times to not concede that there may be ulterior motivation afoot.
.
Apologies, in my previous comment I hadn't read clearly enough and misunderstood. I have deleted it.
Why wouldn't Democrats want ranked choice?
Right wing people tend to be subservient and just fall in line and vote Republican. People on the left tend to be less pragmatic and can be enticed to vote for Green or whatever even when it's obvious they won't win "because of my principles!" Someone voting Green or whatever will be very likely to choose the Democrat candidate down the list of choice before the GOP candidate. When the votes are tallied they will end up with more votes with a ranked choice system than they'd have with the current system.
The real reason why this won't happen is if the GOP have a majority since it is very much against their interests.
The DNC exists to protect incumbents. Don't be fooled, the Dems (elected officials, not voters) don't want ranked choice.
Well someone is being fooled, that's true.
People are always saying this, but is there actually evidence that it's true? The Libertarian Party regularly gets more votes than the Greens, so if anything it seems like the opposite is true. Ross Perot got the most votes of any third party candidate in history, and in both the elections he ran in, Bill Clinton won. In 2016, Trump refused to rule out the possibility of a third party run if he didn't get the nomination, and it appeared to be a serious possibility.
So is this claim just based on vibes or what?
It's been a long time since Ross Perot.
I'm basing it on trends. We saw with RFK being offered whatever he wanted as soon as it looked like he was going to take more votes from Trump than Harris. He dropped out and backed Trump. While not all of his supporters might not automatically go vote for Trump (just as not all Libertarians won't pick R for their second choice) it probably helped.
The Libertarians got what? 1/3 of the votes in 2020 than they did in 2016? Seems like they're on the decline to me.
We're seeing more of a push by various internet influencers (who knows who's paying them, LOL) to push people on the left towards voting third party. And maybe I've spent too much time on lemmy, but it seems to be working. People want to vote for Cornel West or Jill Stein.
It's probably exhausting for campaign workers to have to constantly explain they shouldn't vote third party as it might result in Trump getting in. It would be far easier to say "sure I kinda like [Third Party Candidate] too, but I like [Democratic Candidate] more because blah blah blah, but the most important thing is you go out and vote!" and be fairly confident that vote will cascade down to their candidate. The whole "don't vote third party" schtick that's going on now may just result in that person not voting at all.
A lot of emphasis now is in getting turnout. If a third party candidate can energize some turnout whose votes will cascade down to the Dem candidate, that means the third parties are helping them instead of hurting them. And what people think now about how voting third party will push the Dems more towards that position would actually be true. Right now it's not true but the internet is teaching them otherwise.
It sounds like you're basing it entirely off personal experience. But your personal experience probably doesn't give you a representative cross section of Americans.
The Greens also got 1/3 of the votes in 2020 as 2016, both times being about 1/3 of the Libertarian party.
There's also, like, some pretty big rifts in the right, between the old school establishment and the MAGA crowd. There was tons of infighting over the speaker and whatnot. Trump himself was obviously controversial, and I mentioned the threat of him running third party. If Republican voters would just line up to vote for anybody, the establishment would've never allowed things to splinter to the degree they have, they'd kick people out of the party and the voters would go for whoever they offered instead. I don't see how any of that is explainable if what you're saying is true.
I feel like part of that narrative is just seeing the right run shitty candidates and seeing right wingers vote for them, but that's because the voters have different values and preferences. They still care quite a bit about the things they do care about, and break rank when they don't get their way, and much more so than people in the left do from the numbers I'm seeing.
Neither does yours. The fact is that there are Democrats pushing legislation pushing to move towards Ranked Choice Voting. It's only your personal experience that leads you to believe that it's all for show.
Yeah but they didn't form a new party did they? And I don't think the Dems want to be dependent on the GOP running another unpopular candidate in 2028. They have campaign workers that actually talk to a lot of voters so they'd know better than either of us about the cross section of Americans.
Most people don't know about legislation that has passed, forget about proposed legislation being a thing that will influence voters. So why would they bother proposing legislation they don't really want in an effort to bamboozle people who don't even know about it?
If people vote in the primaries for candidates who support ranked choice voting, then yes.
What primary? What candidate? I can't even find somebody who doesn't support genocide much less rank choice.
Check at the state level. A few states have introduced ranked choice, your state may have someone in the mix trying to make it a thing where you live!
"Why would I vote for a primary party candidate who supports ranked choice voting when I can just throw my vote away on a third-party candidate that will never be elected? I've got principles!"
Look up The Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell.
Falwell made himself a big deal in the GOP by getting his troops to show up at every single local Republican event with enough votes to make sure that they got everything they wanted. It started small with sheriffs and county clerks, and then Congress members.
Exactly. Anytime a small party runs a presidential campaign it's not only a waste of time but it's a waste of money and resources that could have gone to actual races that could affect actual change. Plus they help to delegitimize and demoralize the movements.
The GOP pushed both the Greens and the Libertarians to siphon votes from the Dems.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/09/10/metro/jill-stein-new-hampshire-ballot-republican-help/
I've yet to meet a Libertarian who wasn't just a lazy Republican.
I knew a few back in college but good Lord they were naive. He was a sweet kid but one of them thought we can get rid of the military and just use mercenaries.
"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein. It's a really good science fiction novel and the handbook for a lot of Libertarians.
You can read and enjoy it as a story, but if you examine it you'll see all the hoops the author had to jump through in order to make his society work.
One of the most glaring examples is that there are almost no guns in a prison where machine tools are readily available.
I was a youth at that time and my only memory of the Moral Majority is the boob scene in Airplane! 🤷♀️
one of my earliest memories
This doesn't work for the left because cults are a right-wing phenomenon. Lying and brainwashing people is inherently authoritarian.
By that logic, every Union is a cult. All I said was that people should organize and show up and vote.
Want to build a viable third party for presidential elections? Start small at the city/county level and eventually you will have candidates at the state/federal level. Today's city council is tomorrow's senator/president. Does it really surprise anyone that a relatively unknown and unproven candidate outside of the two major parties doesn't get any traction in a federal election?
That takes money, lots of it and the 2 main parties have huge corporate donors who will never give money to an environmental party
That's already the goal of state chairs for third parties.
Oh it's that easy eh?
I think you might need to reread my post, I didn't say it was easy. It's reality, which generally isn't easy.
Just keep smashing yourself into the bricks to "deny the wall legitimacy" or whatever. I'm sure it will work this time.
Says the people who keep voting 3rd party in federal elections and are certain that this time the result will be different.
So you don't agree that starting from the ground up won't work? Why not? Too much effort or takes too much time?
If only there was some kind of proven road map where countries who has been dominated by their ruling elite using the two party trick went on to form a kind of labour movement that forced a third choice on the ruling class....
Maybe in America. But check other countries. They have preferential voting systems.
I was a proud third party voter for a long time but changed my mind after watching CGPGrey’s video about first past the post. It’s not really ABOUT trying to change minds but FPTP voting rules really do mean that a two party system is bound to very basic human psychology.
Some of these third party people could get elected to the senate if they tried, but have to try for the top job with no experience because their ego can't take that they don't know everything.
I could get elected to senate probably, if I was willing to spend fifteen years doing local and state office first. Ain't nobody got that kind of time I got hospital bills
Politicians have that kind of time. It's paid for by their owners.
Yeah and their corporate owners aren't going to back an environmental anti war candidate
I'm pro- turning food into compost. I'd like to help our constituents and anyone who does that.
Tbf, they have before. Ron Paul for instance was a Libertarian who ran as a Republican and won, and they do run for local offices a lot (at least the Libertarians, never seen a local Green on the ballot), they just also put forth a presidential candidate because if they can get like 5% or 15% of the vote (I can't remember which) they get federal funding and have to get included in the next debates instead of the debates only being R vs D.
Idk about the other third parties, but the Libertarians are doing exactly that.
If I run hard enough, I'll put a me shaped hole in the wall though.
Okay Wile E. Coyote.
Only as long as the you shaped hole is lucky enough to avoid any studs.
You mean in the USA? I guess the more viable path is to campaign to fix their democracy from within the democratic party. And then make new parties.
768 votes wth is wrong with Americans bruh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Tehreek-e-Insaf
If you can create a successful grassroots political party in an environment where your party members and constituents are constantly attacked, murdered, bombed, jailed, tortured, votes faked, votes destroyed, and vote miscounts, you can definitely pull it off in the USA.
It took Pakistan only 20 years to cause a collapse of their corrupt 2 party system and challenge the military dictatorship. People never believed PTI would mount any sort of challenge, but they did by building a solid populist movement, despite facing all of the above.
The "you must vote the lesser evil" is a fallacy that both parties in the USA perpetuate in an attempt to convince you to believe 3rd party voting is a waste of time.
You can't just sit back and complain about the rigged system like "but muh first past the poll voting" as if either Democrats or Republicans will change the system in any way to make it easier for their rivals.
This is exactly why I dislike the Democratic party in particular so much. They are a corporate monolith that pretends to care about your leftist demands by handing out pennies worth of change to get your vote, then the second they refuse to actually significantly change something you demand, they have the audacity to blame you, the voter, for not sucking up to their shitty policies when they inevitably lose the election.
Current case in point: "There is no genocide in Gaza, and we believe we can win without our constituents because our opponent is a mentally insane baby ".
Shittiest take on this community by far.
We need to demand approval choice voting. Every time we hear anything about third parties in this country, we need to use it as a launch pad to tall about approval choice voting
The potential of Trump winning. Unless you live outside of the U.S. or are very privileged a Trump victory would only be devastating.
In a first past the post system like the U.S. has, doing anything but voting for Harris is in fact supporting Trump.
CCP Gray actually put out a good video a while ago explaining why voting 3rd party in a FPTP system only hurts your interests.
In a place like Germany where you have proportional voting none of this applies and you should 100% vote for the best party.
https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo?si=y2NtQ2K6g9GkaNwM
Trump winning would have major ramifications for people outside the US also.
True!
Lol who downvoted this
I mean if you don’t care if one party or the other wins you could do this, but that just means you are one or both of the following:
Don’t have a sense of empathy for those who would be hurt by a Trump victory.
Are personally privileged enough to not be affected personally. If you live in the USA and feel both parties do the same thing you must be.
Imagine all those people whose lives would be worsened in the USA and all around the world by a Trump victory. Don’t you care? Even the people of Palestine would be worse off and they are already suffering beyond either of our comprehensions.
I encourage everyone to vote with empathy here.
We had Trump and the world did not end for you. If you live in the USA that makes you one of the privileged. I know many whose world did end. Good for you that you were not affected. But have empathy for those who where.
We had Biden and much harm reduction was done. The downward slope was lessened. Imagine if Trump got a 4th Supreme Court justice! Imagine if Biden was not there to undo the explicitly harmful policies that hurt less privileged people. Biden winning increased in a notable and serious way those who are the least privileged.
It may be true that the American quality of life has gone down. But voting 3rd party only makes it go down faster. If you just don’t care go for it. But the mathematics of FPTP systems mean that voting 3rd party only hurts your interests.
Biden did not act with empathy when he gave supplies to Israel. But Trump will act with glee and encouragement when he would give supplies to Israel.
I encourage everyone to vote with empathy and think of the least privileged when voting everywhere.
If you are interested in the topic of moral philosophy I have a few book recommendations. I appreciate that you are passionate. I just think an empathy driven ethics is the way to go.
The primaries are over. The risk of Trump is too high and people spreading 3rd Party ideas right now many be trying to demotivate progressives from voting for Harris. I mean, I'm not a big fan of Harris, but I'll still be voting for her over Trump.
It seems like Harris turning half Republican and supporting a genocide is what's demotivating progressives from voting for her and people spreading 3rd party ideas is a symptom of that.
How do you have a four year old account with only two comments?
Anyway, still better than Trump.
To answer your question, I joined Lemmy when it was a niche open source project then left because nothing was happening until the mass migration happened
Fyi, accounts that only make political comments, especially ones that have suspicious comment history come across as astroturf or hacked accounts.
Oh look, yet another .ml troll
What did I say in my comment that isn't true, and do you have an actually convincing argument for that besides calling me a troll?
🙄
Post at ![email protected]
News that Republicans are actively helping 3rd party candidates so that people voting for them will help Republicans win.
Honestly that's not a bad strategy. The biggest weakness of the Democrats is the wide range of political views
They support a genocidal cop as their presidential candidate.
"I am concerned about the genocide in Palestine, so I am going to take actions that will clearly make things much worse for the people in Palestine because that is the ethical thing to do!"
It really shows that feeling morally superior is more importantly to them than actually getting results. Harris has some genocide, so let's help Donald "Finish the Job" Trump win and have lots of genocide. My protest vote sure helped the Palestinians!
Genocide is bad, but apparently genocide isn't bad enough to take a simple action that will prevent it getting worse.
Never said they would. But realistically you have to acknowledge that a third party candidate has no chance of winning this election. If your only concern is Palastine then not voting for Harris actively makes things worse for the people in Palastine, even if Harris is not doing enough to help them. Your options are bad, or worse.
If you're trying to build support for third party candidates for future elections then don't give me any bullshit about Palastine, because that will not help them in any way.
That was literally your argument: https://lemmy.ca/post/28969976/11652757
My God, give it a rest.
You're an idiot with the laziest opinions I've ever seen and you. Can't. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
Grow up, read some books and come back in a few years when you find an adequate mood stabilizer ffs.
I'm going to hold my nose and vote for Kamala but I won't shame people who can't bring themselves to do it.
And this criticism of 'the greens only show up every 4 years' is in bad faith. The greens run in other elections as well, you just only hear about the presidential elections because that's the only time they get some media attention.
This list has a bunch of school board members, city councillors, even a mayor on it. They do run in local elections, and even win sometimes.
No, it's really not. The Mayor of Galesburg, IL, a town of 30.000 is the highest office any green politician holds in the US. This is fucking ridiculous.
By their own admission, only 130 Greens are currently in office in highly influential positions such as Zoning Board of Appeals Alternate or Cemetery Trust Fund Committee. This party is a fucking joke. And that's the party whose presidential candidate accepts an invitation from Putin.
I'm "lucky" enough to live in a state where my vote doesn't matter at all. I'm completely free to not vote for genocide. What an awesome "democracy".
It must be nice, being privileged enough to see who wins this election as a fashion choice instead of something that will affect your life.
Noooo you must enjoy voting for our designated ghoul and voice your full throated support every day until November or else it's basically a vote for Trump. Also, you can't ask us to change any platforms whatsoever cause that's divisive and a vote for Trump.
It's really astounding to see how quickly Democratic sycophants mimic the MAGA folks they mock on the right. These are the same people that were telling those of us who wanted Biden to drop out that we were all secret Trump supporters paid by the Russians even though it was clear he was going to lose.
There’s a caveat: That statement only applies to a house that’s designed to only have 2 viable doors.
It applies to any house that isn’t designed to infer your intended goal and automatically rebuild itself to suit.
It applies to a house built by slavers trying to keep everybody else out working in the fields.
You can just say "China"
The wall will wear down eventually. I think.
This is the same tone set by the people who whined that we were refusing to vote for Biden and oh look now Biden isn’t in the race anymore because we refused to accept him.
Keep accepting the one candidate that they spoon in front of us without asking if we actually want that one
This is the same tone set by the people who whined that we were refusing to vote for Gore and oh look Nader didn't win Bush did.
Gore won the vote. The election was stolen by the supreme court and Roger Stone it was not the fault of a 3rd party at all if the law had been followed gore would have been given Florida https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
It's a little different because people complained, Pelosi (aka the party listened) acted.
I our current political system, the game theory just doesn't work for much besides a two party system.
Exactly.
Its applying leverage to the party saying meet these criteria or get spoiled. It's basically a union for protest votes, and it's effective. Which makes it extremely important in the current two party system because it's the only way certain issues will get addressed.
Yeah absolutely how can I ever vote against war and imperialism if both parties are in favor of giving endless money to defense contractors? You're basically saying I have to force myself to vote for the American military death machine in every single election or I'm a bad person and maybe you have a point but if you have to make that argument I think you should have a long look in the mirror
Biden didn't drop out because some online leftists refused to vote for him, he dropped out because big donors that back the Democrats wanted him to.
Those same morons didn't vote in the primary to oust him.
What primary? No alternative was offered, no debates happened.
Biden being forced out is a great example.
Democrats will only appeal to people not voting for them already. People showing them they won't vote for Genocide you already changes policy.
When the pressure gets too high Democrats will cave. If they want your vote make them work for it never let them fearmonger you into giving it for free. Jill Stein 2024 baby.
I dunno about this analogy. I think the doctor proved that with enough time, anything can become a door.
no it isn't.
American shower thoughts
There will never be an acceptable time to vote third party according to liberals. Unless you're fine with an infinite state of groveling towards people in power. If we can't even push them left on genocide when it could cost the election, we can't move them left on anything. The status quo is fine for people who have the resources to deal with it and people not effected by Police brutality and other negative effects.
Yes but the other two doors open straight into hell.
And even if the candidate wins, then what? They have no say in Congress. It's the House of Reps and the Senate that passes legislation. Your new third party candidate can only choose to sign or to veto bills passed by the House and Senate.
Beau on it https://youtu.be/-KX8xddKfeM
Do you apply this same logic to Trump winning the election or are presidents only this powerless when they have a D next to their name and are being criticized for supporting abhorrent legislation?
What? Trump was the leader of the party and had a cult following through and through. You're making no sense.
I'm not making sense? You just stated that congress has all the power while now arguing that Trump would have all the power because he's "the leader of the party." That doesn't make sense as you can't have it both ways unless you're just trying to spread misinformation.
Seriously? Ok one more attempt. Trump is the leader of the republican party. The people in the republican party selected him as their leader. I don't know how to make it any clearer but I'll try with a tiny fib: Trump is the republican party. The republican party is Trump.
Trump tells his party "hey write up this legislation, do it because I'm the leader of the party that you are in". Notice that part "because I'm the leader of the party that you are in". That's not "because I am president", it's "because I'm the leader of the party that you are in". And by and large, the republican party will do that. They will listen to their party leader (the one they selected) and write up the legislation, try to pass it in the House of reps, try to pass it in the senate, and then it will land on Trumps desk.
To be more specific, the party will meet, they will discuss what they want to do, listening heavily to what the president/leader wants to do because it was his "vision" for america that got them elected, then write up legislation.
A third party candidate does not have party members in the house or senate that will do that.
If that doesn't make sense to you, you have some reading to do. I think I'm out.
Progress is slow. Start with killing the popularity of the second party/party you absolutely don't align with/party that will move the needle away from your party first.
Why do you care if the person you voted for wins?
Outside of "not letting the other person win", you should vote for who you align with, or who represents you best.
If more people stopped caring about voting for "the viable candidate", we'd probably see a third party in American politics...
Because it's an election with consequences, not an online fandom.
Not to most of these people pushing third-parties.
All elections have consequences. I know that Americans like to be dramatic (especially on Lemmy, Reddit is far more tame in this regard), but voting for someone that wants to promote policies that you support is how those policies are promoted.
I say this time and time again on here, but America isn't special. Many countries have two main parties, but while third parties don't always see power, they maintain Influence everywhere. Hell, you can argue that the Tea Party, Brexit, Irish Unification, MAGA, Immigration reform in Germany, all of this is due to influence outside of the main parties.
Why are you in this thread if you're not even American? This is obviously about the US elections.
I personally care because most of my family is American and because Canadian politics often echo what's going on in the U.S. Pierre Polievre wouldn't be seeing as much success if he didn't have Trump's culture war nonsense to use as inspiration. A lot of people outside of America still care very much about U.S. politics because it does have an effect on global affairs.
I hear you on that.
Because Lemmy isn't a US-only social network?
This post is obviously about US politics.
Ok?
Because the policies those people put into effect have very real consequences for citizens. Especially when one candidate is openly hostile towards significant marginalized groups in society and wishes to bring them harm. This isn't a team sport. This is a struggle for survival for many who stand to lose a lot of rights and freedoms for simply being who they were born as.
So yes, we should care who wins. Those two people are your options. Third party is not.
No, we wouldn't. There are still people who's closest candidate is one of the two main parties.
This is the dumbest thing I've seen anyone say here yet. Congratulations.
I've never voted for a major party presidential candidate in my life. It has never cost anyone anything, because I used to live in a deep red state and now live in a deep blue state. There's a better chance of helping a candidate hit thresholds that would qualify them for things like campaign funding, then there is of Tennessee or Illinois being the pivotal swing state. The vast majority of Americans are in similar situations, there's only a handful of states where your presidential vote matters at all.
Despite this, and the fact that I've voted for Democrats down ballot, liberals hate me, and are always trying to fight me over it. Why? Because the presidential race is the only thing anybody cares about. For all the countless, identical debates over the presidential race, I've seen virtually no discussion on here of other elections. Culturally, your take on the presidential race is how your political identity is defined. That cultural tendency is so powerful that it can even bleed into foreign countries.
The more people focus on my presidential voting behavior, which has no potential to affect anything, the more it reaffirms that such behavior is important. The reason that people care so much about my vote is not because they care about the outcome, it's because they want me to display a sign of loyalty, to bend the knee, to conform to their norms. But if everyone's going to treat it as an expression of identity, then, all else being equal regarding the outcome, it would be better to define myself according to what I actually believe. The fact that people get big mad over someone voting third party even in an extremely solid red or blue state is all the more reason to do it. My vote doesn't affect your life at all since it's totally irrelevant to the outcome, so stop obsessing over what amounts to a personal decision.
These snarky jabs are missing the point. I'm not a major party prodigal son casting a spite vote, I am actually not interested in either of their platforms and want to force them slowly over time to change.
That's not how it works. You want to force the party left then build movement from the ground up. Go out on the corner and collect signatures to change your voting system to ranked choice instead first past the post. Run for local office as a socialist or green.
The fact that all you have to do is once every 4 years push a button should tell you that it's not the right thing to do to effect change.
Presidential elections are not about voting for a perfect candidate, very few elections are ever about that. They are about putting someone in power you are most capable of negotiating with. The person that is both capable of winning and closest to your ideals.
It does actually work that way, at least sometimes. If a major party loses enough votes to a third party, it forces them to adjust their platform at least enough to win back would-be voters.
Whenever third party voters honestly tell people that they are voting third party because it closely aligns with their values, and that neither major party is even slightly compatible, major party apologists and cheerleaders come out of the woodwork to saying actually you're one-of-us, you just don't know it yet, and if you just vote hard enough for my candidate then things will get better. It's been over a hundred years of least dirty of two shirts, and it's not getting better.
It doesn't work if that's the last time you get a vote.
Every four years it's "the most important election of our lives", and if we're not scared into voting D it'll be the death of Democracy itself. Sorry, I'm not a buyer. My state had a double-digit R majority in 2020, it's not in my interest to vote for a candidate I don't want.
That's laudable, but the way to do that is to vote in primaries, not to vote third party in the general election
I'm not a major party member, so I can't vote in their primaries
That's easy for you to fix
Not if I want to continue participating in my party, it's astounding how that simple concept is so difficult for everyone to understand
Then the likely outcome of your actions is at odds with your stated goal of forcing the two major parties to shift their platforms over time.
The candidates themselves aren't really that important, they've shown themselves to be chameleons whose positions shift as it's convenient and necessary. Authoritarian self-styled strongman Donald Trump felt compelled to show up at the Libertarian National Convention only to get booed when he tried to woo voters, so there must be at least some recognition of third parties' interests.
How about you get a fucking therapist and work on your own issues like the rest of us, thx.
Insane levels of cope from the party that's suing states to remove the "unviable" third parties to protect their genocide candidate's chances at beating someone who is literally incapable of forming basic sentences
You should get out of the shower...
The parties are already there or you couldn't vote them, this example is stupid. Supporting parties with blood in their hands is endorsing evil.
Voting for a third party, like trying to walk through a third door, is an indication of intent. Going through the door would be getting them elected to office.
And yes, supporting a party would be endorsing whatever evil policies the party supports—but voting isn’t an act of endorsement. Nobody knows how you vote; it has no meaning as a personal statement. Its only meaning is in the differential effects of the policies of the two candidates your vote decides between, in the most likely scenario in which it is the deciding vote.
You absolutely should support and endorse a party you believe in, but don’t mistake voting in a presidential election for either of those things.
Voting is a direct act of endorsement
There aren't only two candidates.
There's no confusion, a party perpetrating war and genocide is evil and if you support them you are evil too.
Your vote is expressly not public—you’re prohibited from keeping or sharing any proof of your vote. In part this is to prevent people from using their votes as signals of anything outside the immediate issue.
In the event that your vote actually decides the election, it does so by giving the winner one more vote than the runner-up; at that point those are the only two candidates at issue. And that’s the only event in which your vote matters.
Spin it as much as you want. Anyone supporting, endorsing, or voting for a party with blood in his hand fueling a genocide is directly complicit in the crime
Go ahead and feel morally superior as your protest vote enables someone way worse to hurt way more people. All the women dying of ectopic pregnancies or sepsis from stillbirths they cannot abort are on you. The GOP will let Russia have Ukraine where they will rape and murder anyone who resists, and they will unconditionally increase funding for Israel's genocidal land grab.
And you will think, "that's not my fault, I voted for the not evil one."
But that's not true, because you could have voted for the person who is willing to negotiate on those things, but you chose to feel better about yourself instead of actually help anyone.
Supporting and voting a party complicit in a genocide is not just a "feeling". Dozens of kids are being murdered daily in gaza, this is already the worst scenario.
Wrong, these are on people voting for the red and blue party which for a century have been cycling in power promoting the same authoritarian politics.
I encourage you to read about the cold war and check how many military bases the us has spread all over the world. I also encourage you to read about ukraine government corruption and their authoritarian measures and lastly i encourage you to check who usa and russia are in partnership with.
And if Trump wins because of your "morally superior" choice you'll have only succeeded in helping Israel exterminate them faster. There will not be any discussions about whether to pause or halt shipments of arms.
I blame the Armenian genocide on you and you alone.
Deny it all you want, you were complicit AF.
how so?
This post was reported for disinformation. To me this post reads like an opinion and hyperbole.
If we do assume that the post is making a factual claim; I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if voting has ever been used to claim that someone is complicit in a crime. Im open to being pointed to evidence.
Look, you're either saying america is a functional democracy or no citizens are on the hook for the crimes of the government.
Which is it again?
It kinda looks like your arguing that voting doesn’t work.
Ignoring tactical voting doesn't work
And yet, they weren't.
What about their arguing?
All this anti-third party logic fails as soon as the goal is outcomes regardless of which political party ends up taking credit. Just 5% of the GE puts another platform on every ballot in the next cycle. And, that immediately places immense pressure upon the duopoly.
It's so simple there's now a massive amount of state-sponsored propaganda trying to prevent too many from figuring it out.
The presence of minor parties on the ballot doesn’t “place immense pressure on the duopoly”—it just tips the balance toward one or the other component of the duopoly. Which is why either party will actively encourage it when it suits them.
Edit: There’s a historically-proven method of forming new parties in the U.S., which is why we don’t still have the Whigs or the Federalists. In the past, distinct factions would form within one of the dominant parties, until the parent party imploded and two or more new parties emerged. That process of internal fission was suppressed after the Civil War, and that’s how the “duopoly” now maintains its power.
Of course, a different voting system would serve the same purpose (arguably better), and the suppression of alternate voting methods is also duopolistic. But the existence of minor parties under the current system just reenforces the duopoly by channeling dissent away from internal factions.
Yes however it will always be a two party system with first past the post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
that's not what duverger's "law" says.
Sorry I wrote the wrong response initially
Think more, reactionary. It's not rocket science. It's not even algebra.
The problem is that any third party that manages to eventually displace a member of the duopoly immediately replaces that party in the new duopoly.
Because the duopoly is a result of First Past the Post (FPTP) voting. As long as we use FPTP the duopoly will persist, just with different parties filling the two roles.
Anything short of switching away from FPTP for some form of Rank Choice is going to be a band-aid, mere temporary relief, and not even a very good one.
Which is the point. Voting third party won't fix the system, certainly not at the presidential level. So work with what you have now, and work towards something better in the areas where it's actually possible.
There you go again caring about which political party takes credit. Repeating the same fallacy over and over again only works on idiots, meaning the vast majority of humanity. See: The Engineering of Consent (1947), The Manufacturing of Consent (1988).
You know Democrats are cooked when they start attacking third party voters instead of Trump voters.
Especially now people really start paying attention to the third parties.
If it's easier to reason with third party voters than trump voters, it seems like the logical thing to do.
EDIT: also worth pointing out the difference between "attacking" trump voters as individuals, because they have proven themselves to truly be deplorable, and "attacking" third party voting as a decision.
Democrats have done far more to reason with Republicans this election cycle than they have with third party voters on the left who at least don't want genocide but know that the duopoly is never going to budge on their undying support of Israel. Let alone other actually progressive policies.
On top of that, I'd say there's some nuance - nationally, you'll see Democrats reasoning with Republicans, targeting the non-maga conservatives.
However here on Lemmy, there are very few conservatives as well as a disproportionate number of third party folks, so you'll see a lot more discussion centered around third parties.
There's not much reasoning going on. Only dishonest claims about how Democrats actually stand for things they don't stand for such as "Biden is actually the biggest ally of Palestinians", and screaming insults.
If only people like you were as emotional about genocide as they were about third parties, the world might be a better place.
Are you 12...?
Most civil Lemmy user
Gee I wonder why they reacted to you like that. You're just a freedom fighter
For what its worth I agree. The Democrats are killing themselves from within. Say what you want about Trump but they are smart enough to target the moderate crowd. Meanwhile Harris is busy dodging hard questions about her political stance. The liberal media likes to brag about how good the Democrats are doing but the reality is they have lost a lot of ground and Harris is too far left for most of the swing voters. People have not been happy with the way Biden is running things and it shows.
I also find it funny that Harris is adapting the Trump strategy. She is increasingly responding with insults and slander instead of being a cool collected alternative to Trump. Her association with Biden is also not doing her favors and many people just don't know her well enough to support her.
I suppose Lemmy isn't the place for political discussion. Lemmy as a whole is far left and it shows. This might be a shock but social media isn't a good representation of the bigger political views. If you go on a platform dominated by the right you will end up with people calling you far left because you don't believe in racism.
Democrats would rather get really mad at people who don't want to support Genocide than just stop supporting Genocide.
If Democrats truly believe Trump is the next Hitler you'd think they would try to appeal to voters a little harder. Maybe the Democratic party is not as scared of Trump as their fearmongering suggests.
Note: Linkerbean is a republican pretending to be left leaning, here just to dissuade left-leaning folk from voting dem.
I said so to them a while back and their reply, since deleted, was "Cope." https://lemmy.world/comment/12097015
Downvote and move on, but you'll get only nonsense if you engage.
This comment got reported. And while trolling is not allowed. Attacking an individual is also not allowed. So I'm not sure if attacking them for being a troll is allowed.
If you think a post is trolling (ie: just trying to stir up anger rather than trying to make an argument for something), please report it. If you think a poster is serial trolling please point it out in the report.
I'm open to feedback.
I've edited it to make it more factual and perhaps less emotive by replacing the phrase "republican troll" with "republican pretending to be left leaning" and provided a link to where they replied "cope" when I pointed this out to them previously. I don't know if you can see the reply, it won't expand for me, but I promise you that's what it said. I don't know whether you count arguing in bad faith just to persuade your political opponents not to vote as trolling, but I certainly feel it's not good behaviour and worth pointing out to folks who are taken in.
Thank you, I really appreciate the effort to tone things down.
I want people to have the freedom be passionate in their comments and posts, and I think the community rules do a good job of allow the freedom to argue passionately. The rules do aim to avoid attacks against people themselves and groups of people.
So, while toning things down is not the primary goal, when things get aggressive it's harder for everyone to avoid ad hominem attacks.
Only in order to pursuade folks not to vote democratic (which is bizarre because Trump and his party are pretty rabidly on favour of "finish them" outcomes in Gaza).
Link: https://lemmy.world/comment/12097015 I can only see the reply "cope" in my inbox. On the website the 1 more reply never expands for me.
Stupid fear mongering like this is why your politics is stuck in the last century.
But whatever floats your boat.
Cool, thanks!