Sounds like you’re very concerned with the spoiler effect that is inherent with First Past The Post voting.
Feel free to stop by my ask lemmy Post to discuss your post election commitment to replace FPTP voting in your state.
Yankies, I swear to fucking god - don’t you fucking dare.
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You gotta hand it to the conservatives. Even if Trump loses, they were successful in pushing the Democrats further to the right. Imagine arguing that the genocide they’re aiding and abetting is the least evil choice.
I voted Stein in Georgia. My vote never belonged to Harris, so me not voting for her has taken nothing away.
Maybe stop assuming people will vote for candidates, and start earning those votes.
I feel bad for Americans and kids in general. More fascist radicalization pipelines pop up every single day. The money and effort spent must rival most countries GDPs. Just the media organizations alone…
Some days it can feel like standing at the foot of a mountain watching the entire mountain side crashing down.
Then I realize it’s just people. People we can step up to. And slap in the damn face.
I don’t need any mental gymnastics or long winded explanation. Both of the major party candidates have parts of their platform that are deal breakers for me. So, I will exercise my right to vote for someone that more aligns with my values.
The concept that voting for a third-party candidate is somehow “helping” one of the major party candidates is based on the assumption that the third-party candidate’s voters would have otherwise voted for one of the major party candidates.
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Here are two candidates, and you vetter like one of them, because that’s all you get, otherwise we couldn’t call ourself a “democracy” anymore.
I cringe every time I see this come up.
Because it isn’t what you actually mean, and the horrible logic of it makes it easy for the Lemmy Lefties to dunk on.
Of course a 3rd party vote isn’t a vote for Trump any more than it is a vote for Kamala.
What it actually is is a discarded opportunity to vote against Trump. Which is also dispicable, but actually accurate.
Everyone knows that’s what you mean by this, but the Lemmy Lefties will play dumb and latch onto that logical fallacy every time.
They loved Bernie and praised him to the skies.
Then he endorsed Biden and Harris.
Now he’s a ‘sheepdog’ that rounds up people to be slaughtered.
If nobody votes 3rd party then we’ll never have a 3rd party candidate that matters.
It’s like bicycle infrastructure. Nobody wants to ride bikes on a highway, but you won’t see bike riders until there’s a trail somewhere for them to ride on. You can say it never matters and that there aren’t any cyclists out there, but you’re wrong. I think there’s a lot of Americans looking for another party right now.
It’s the trolley problem again. This time, you have 3 tracks and 2 switches. The trolley is headed towards 5 people, one switch sends it to 1 person, and the other switch would send it to 0 people, but it’s broken. Voting third party is pulling the broken switch, knowing the 5 people will die but you’ve shifted the responsibility from yourself to whoever was supposed to fix the switch.
Excellent analogy. If anyone still plays dumb after reading this, they probably are
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I like your analogy. Let me expand.
This same situation happens every day. For years now, 1 person has died every day. Nobody pulls the broken lever, but if people started pulling it, it would start working. For the first couple days or weeks, 5 people would die each time, but eventually we would be able to get the train on a safe track.
I really like your take on this. So how is the switch going to get fixed, when the only time anyone pays attention to the fact that it’s broken, is when lives are on the line?
Why do neoliberals bring up the trolley problem as if it is some settled debate among scholars that there is one clear possible answer?
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I’m not a neoliberal, I’m a socialist. I’m just not an idiot who will give a fascist free rein just because his opponent has the same shitty foreign policy as every politician in the whole fucking country has. There is a difference between the status-quo level of bad and catastrophic.
Excellently put!
Harris supporters on Lemmy have called for me to be put in a concentration camp.
*Harris supporters with violence fantasies: https://lemm.ee/post/45695948/15722267
Your fears of fascism are ignorant of the capacity that Democrats exhibit.
Harris supporters on Lemmy have called for me to be put in a concentration camp.
Lol no they haven’t.
Harris supporters on Lemmy have called for me to be put in a concentration camp.
Yah, I’ll take “Things that didn’t happen” for a thousand, Alex. Let me guess, they did the “you’re going to be the most _____ person in the camps” joke and you took offense to the harsh, practical truth of it, so rather than reconsider whatever performative BS you were trying to use to justify voting against a clear and present danger, you decided to do exactly what the right does, and spin natural consequences and hurt feelings to make yourself a victim.
edit: I was absolutely right, 100% accurate. Lets just ignore the clowns, shit’s too serious out there to fuck around with this performative BS.
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Edit: I think my point was too subtle. What I meant was that it seems like lefties will bicker and infight rather than focusing on the bigger enemy first, until that enemy manages to seize power and it’s too late. We’ll be “united” in that we’ll be executed together.
Sometimes, I wonder if a Trump victory would be the only way to get the various leftist factions to stop arguing and stand together, side by side, united in the fact that fascists don’t care what flavour of ideological opposition they’re executing.
Who gives a shit about whether the Trolley Problem is settled - it’s about your answer: Which option do you endorse?
The trolley problem isn’t “settled debate” for the same reasons that Kamala vs Trump isn’t “settled debate”.
The point of the trolley problem and why it’s analogous is that it’s coming up fast and you must choose to either pull that lever or not. Whichever choice you make, that’s the moral character you’ve chosen to exhibit.
The Dems are running on Trump’s 2020 platform. Build the wall. Lock up immigrants. Both parties are far-right shitholes, and it’s time people started realizing that.
The Dems in 2028 will be calling for mass deportations.
This went so far past just being wrong that it might just end up creating an entirely new paradigm of stupidity.
^ This right here. Exactly my point. They are going to keep telling you Kamala and Trump are the same so you spoil your chance to prevent Trump from taking office again.
They are not subtle, and they do not care about the fallout of a Trump reelection. They are privileged enough that it won’t affect them or their loved ones. It’s despicable.
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Cringe
Not everyone lives in a swing state where votes actually matter.
Do you know what will definitely NOT help get rid of the electoral college? People wasting their votes on 3rd party spoilers
Do you know what would MORE LIKELY move people to demand the elimination of the electoral college? Harris getting 10 million+ more votes, and Trump either winning the electoral college or attempting a coup based on lies because a swing state was close.
The more votes Harris gets, the clearer the will of the people, the harder it is to pretend there was voter fraud.
“You have to vote for a candidate that refuses to represent you so that people who don’t care about the will of the people will think that you support that candidate.” is a new one.
What a bold and bizarre claim to think there is any winning margin that would repel suspicions.
If Harris wants liberal votes, why is she courting Republicans?
Thank goodness not enough people in “safe” states think that way.
They use the same logic of people in swing states??
I must have missed that footnote in their rhetoric.
Come on, guy.
I’m not your guy, buddy!
Hey, not only am i your buddy, I’m also your fwiend, guy.
Check my history. Vote third party if you don’t live in a swing state is literally what I have been saying.
Ex https://lemmy.ml/post/21262971, https://lemmy.ml/comment/14519387
Good. Tell your Lemmy Lefty buddies to do the same.
By definition, most people do not live in swing states.
Disclaimers and footnotes are irrelevant.
At least MAGA is honest. Yuck.
Honest lmao
Yeah – they’re proud of their hatred and open about wanting Trump to dismantle the system.
Lemmy Lefties just posture and virtue signal. It’s disgusting.
I think we have the best chance to break the third party at the local level.
No one is buying the bullshit you have for sale.
You sure seem to have every excuse in the book, don’t you?
It sounds like it’s young people (under 25) who don’t understand exactly how bad it will be if trump wins.
I’ve survived a lot of shit presidents. Trump is the first one who actually scares me.
Hopefully they will do the right thing when it comes time to actually vote.
Even Dick “I did 911” Cheney is against him. He’s an actual evil person who thinks Trump is too evil
I think ‘too evil’ is an oversimplification. DC is lawful evil, DT is chaotic evil. It’s the chaos DC doesn’t like, not the evil.
Well put!
Too evil for Dick Cheney is a very special form of evil indeed.
In a way, this is all you need to know right here.
W was actually worse than trump’s first term.
But that’s only because W had far more competent people, it’s like how Germany was severely handicapped in the war by Hitler always getting in the damn way.
This time I suspect he’d have better minions.
Are these Schrodinger’s young people who simultaneously don’t vote, but also single-handedly tip the entire election?
Germany’s first time voters helped the far-right (Nazi) party AfD getting a lot of votes in the EU elections recently. AfD’s TikTok game (with Russia’s support) is very strong. Go figure.
If every young person voted, the Republican party would collapse until it took a hard left turn. This is not a paradox.
If wishes were fishes we’d all be in the sea?
They aren’t wrong. At least not in spirit. In a non-stupid system they’d be correct at every level.
Until everybody in the conversation understands the contents of that video, you aren’t at the point where you can have the conversation meaningfully. It changes the whole game.
And once they understand it, the remaining conversation may just be a mutual nod of understanding. First past the post is a third party killer, and not because the idiot populace lacks the will. The actual voting math itself is the problem, and ranked choice (or similar) solves the voting math problem in a way that third, fourth, fifth parties can exist and win, instead of debuffing allies and by so doing helping their enemies.
If Democrats really cared about beating Republicans, they would be fighting hard for ranked choice voting. Instead, their primary concern is setting up a scapegoat so they can blame "the left’ if they lose.
This is the scapegoat I’ll always remember:
the video learned the wrong lesson. party consolidation is the result of strategic voting. values voting is the solution.
You just completely missed the point.
You literally cannot “values vote” your way to a functional First Past the Post voting system.
And trying to get others to join in your misunderstanding of basic reality is actively harmful to your, and their interests.
Maybe that’s the problem. You don’t want to admit that you’re the bad guy…
values voting is the solution. it’s plain as day that the reason party consolidation happens is strategic voting. a refusal to compromise preserves a diversity of parties.
I’m not a bad guy.
Here’s what happens when we refuse to compromise. Some people care more about minority civil rights than anything else, so they get the best civil rights candidate. Some people care about feminism more than anything else, so they get the best feminist candidate. Some people care about unions more than anything else, so they get the best union candidate.
Conservatives then rally around a putrid flesh monster who promises to shoot all the above on day one, because that’s what they care about. That candidate wins with a 40/20/20/20 vote.
Values voting cannot solve this.
you speaking about it as though people who would vote for a conservative only have one issue: Conservative candidate. but it’s a whole platform, and it’s also diverse in its Interests
people who would vote for a conservative only have one issue: Conservative candidate.
That’s literally what’s hapepning. Trump’s VP pick was incredibly against Trump until he got picked and then he got very much pro. Hell, conservative party doesn’t have a stated program, they literally don’t state any values.
the libertarian party punches way above the greens. you’re simply wrong.
It is, but they don’t recognize the contradictions between their various factions. They will very happily rally around a candidate that promises to sweep away all the leftists. Each of them imagines that their faction will be the one on top in the end.
You’re not bad, and I’m sick of the infighting. But denying the reality of the fundamental flaws in the electoral system is just ignorant. Idealism doesn’t work when the platform to implement those ideals is broken as fuck.
If you’re not a bad guy, you’re just wrong. This is very basic game theory and not actually controversial in any way
game theory assumes rational actors. it does not determine human behavior
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We all already understand how it works. Every single third party voter hears this stuff constantly, from literally everyone. It is impossible to not hear it while telling people you’re voting third party, even if you tried as hard as you could to block it out.
Maybe someday you’ll actually understand then.
Your little party literally cannot win at anything beyond the local level.
Has your third party run for any local positions? No? They only show up in presidential election years?
That tells us they are horrible people who know damn well that they’re helping Trump.
I understand already. The problem is that none of you understand or have any interest in engaging with what third party voters actually believe or why we reject your arguments, you just want to repeat the same BS over and over in hopes that we fall in line.
The only people who are helping Trump are Trump voters, because that’s how votes work.
What you believe doesn’t matter. What reality is, and how it works, and what is on the line is what matters.
That’s not how votes work. And I’m not going to explain it to you because EVERONE here already has. You have absolutely no intention to argue in good faith at this point.
In FPTP, any vote not for one, is an assist for the other. Period. End of story. Case closed. No more debate on it.
That you’re here to continue arguing with people illustrates that you’re not here to discuss it in good faith at all.
Therefore, I’d ask anyone reading along to just disregard this person as a bad faith actor and don’t engage with them any further on this.
So if I don’t vote for Kamala, I’m voting for Trump. But hold on - by not voting for Trump, that’s also a vote for Kamala! But I’m also voting for the person I actually voted for. Am I casting votes for three different candidates?
The way votes work is that they tally up all the people who actually voted for a candidate, and that number is higher than the people who actually voted for any particular other candidate, then that candidate wins. Third party votes do not get added to either candidate’s vote total. So not voting for one is not an assist for the other. Period. End of story. Case Closed. No more debate about it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_United_States_presidential_election
Here. This is how your system actually works. Not how you believe it to work. Wilson won with less than 42% of the votes because a third party managed to be popular enough to split the votes and stole enough votes from Taft. This is what would happen if people actually listened to you. Thank fuck they don’t.
Those votes did not belong to Taft in the first place, so they were not “stolen.” They belonged to the voters, who can give them to whoever they choose. As a matter of fact, Taft got fewer votes than Roosevelt, so if anything it would be more correct to say that Taft is the one that “stole” votes from him.
Of course, it is impossible to say what would’ve happened if it were just between two candidates, there is no way to know that every Roosevelt voter would vote Taft or that every Taft voter would vote Roosevelt.
Reading this thread is painful…
You say you know exactly how it works. Are you aware that the only possibilities for president are the Dem or Rep nominee? Your comments make it seem like you don’t know that.
It’s because Objection here is a full on ml cult member. They use moronic statements like calling people NSA spies, everyone they don’t like is a lib, they’re trans of course so that’s their defense when cornered, Ukraine started the war, etc etc. Their comment history is a who’s who of all the classic cliches.
It’s not worth your time talking to them. They’re just trolling for 20 comment deep arguments.
Yes, I’m aware that those are the only realistic winners of this election. I’m not aware of anything I might have said that would imply I think otherwise.
by not voting for a candidate that can win, your vote is entirely thrown away, it could’ve been used on someone who had a chance, but was wasted, therefore it benefitted the party you least support
vote strategically, or why bother?
Yeah… they have no intention to discuss anything in good faith whatsoever. You’re spot on with the logic, but they’re not going to even address it. Instead- they’ll just dump an unasked-for ethics lesson on you because it makes them feel smart and superior to everyone.
Check their comment history. They’re like a wannabe Chidi from The Good Place, only he isn’t even a real person, and their interpretation of him is WAY off.
Ok, so now it’s thrown away as opposed to being a vote for Trump.
There are several good reasons why voting third party is better than not voting. First, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy to say that a third party can’t win, and that assumption is based on previous vote totals in previous elections, so the total in this election will affect conventional wisdom in future elections. Second, there are thresholds where even if a party doesn’t win, they could be eligible for things like public election funding. Third, voting third party as opposed to not voting promotes political engagement, and can publicize organizations like PSL that are involved in things outside of elections. Fourth, voting third party tells politicians where you’re politically aligned, and opens the door for the party to bargain with a major party and potentially being able to offer an endorsement in exchange for concessions.
I think there is a point that gets left out in this back and forth a lot. So because of the way our system is, only two parties currently have a real world chance at winning. And yes voting for one is not a vote for the other. Likewise voting 3rd party is not voting for the other. In any literal sense this is true.
The argument that’s trying to be made but is being done poorly imo, is that if you aren’t helping to stop a party from winning by voting against them (and for the only other party capable of winning) then you are actively hurting the chances of said party being defeated. So in this case, not voting for harris, who is the only candidate opposing trump with a real world chance of winning, means that you are helping trump to win, because it’s one less vote to the party capable of beating him.
When they say you voting 3rd party is a vote for trump, it’s not literal. It’s the effective end though. If not enough people vote harris, trump wins. They are talking about the argument from a single perspective, of defeating trump. You can make the argument from the other perspective of trump defeating harris too, that not voting trump helps harris. And both statements are true. If you don’t help a cause, you hurt it. And the same goes for 3rd parties. If you don’t help them, you hurt them.
Let’s take our current race as an example. If I had ranked choice I’d vote 3rd party, then harris, then a 4th party then at the very bottom trump. Since we have FPTP though this really just becomes my order of preference.
In our FPTP system without ranked choice voting, when it comes to a federal presidential election, if you aren’t voting for a party that can actually win (even if they aren’t your first choice), then you are increasing the chances for their competition. In our case the 3rd and 4th party are incapable of producing a win, no matter how badly we may want it. So if I want my vote to make a difference that helps push things towards my preferences, then I have to remove those two from my consideration. I could vote for them. But by doing so my alternative preference of harris doesn’t get a vote. Fewer votes for my alternative preference means that my lowest preference of trump stands a better chance of winning because there is now less opposition from the preference with a chance to win.
Any and all parties want you to vote for them. But their next preference is that you not vote, or at least vote in a way that doesn’t support their strongest competition.
If it were green against democrats as the top two in an election, and you are cheering on green. Would you prefer someone (Joe) that doesn’t want to vote green, instead vote democrat, a 3rd party with no chance at winning, or not at all? I can’t say what you’d choose in actuality, but in most cases, others in the same position wouldn’t care one bit if Joe voted 3rd party or not at all, because at least he didn’t help the democrats.
Sorry, a bit rambly and this is from my phone so probably littered with grammar issues. But that’s my general point of view on it. Most people view it as if someone isn’t helping, they are hurting. Thanks for coming to my ted talk lol
In any literal sense this is true.
It is very much false, in any literal sense. When they count up the votes, they do not add third party votes to the other side. The argument you’re actually trying to make (or should be trying to make, at least) is that, despite being false in a literal sense, it is true in a metaphorical or in a practical sense. Otherwise, you are just objectively wrong.
The argument that’s trying to be made but is being done poorly imo, is that if you aren’t helping to stop a party from winning by voting against them (and for the only other party capable of winning) then you are actively hurting the chances of said party being defeated. So in this case, not voting for harris, who is the only candidate opposing trump with a real world chance of winning, means that you are helping trump to win, because it’s one less vote to the party capable of beating him.
No, I’m not “hurting” Harris’ chances. I’m just not helping them. I am not taking a vote away from Harris, if you wipe me away from existence, Harris doesn’t have “one less vote” than she would have otherwise, she has the exact same number. So this is also wrong.
When they say you voting 3rd party is a vote for trump, it’s not literal.
You just said it was literal.
If you don’t help a cause, you hurt it. And the same goes for 3rd parties. If you don’t help them, you hurt them.
Categorically false. If someone on the other side of the world murders someone, and I did nothing to help the victim, did I hurt them? No, I just didn’t help them. The baseline or zero-point is non-involvement.
In our FPTP system without ranked choice voting, when it comes to a federal presidential election, if you aren’t voting for a party that can actually win (even if they aren’t your first choice), then you are increasing the chances for their competition
Again, false. I’m not increasing the chances for their competition, I’m just not decreasing their chances.
Most people view it as if someone isn’t helping, they are hurting.
I have no idea if “most people” view it that way or not, but regardless, it’s not how I view it and I don’t think it’s a reasonable way to view it.
You’re wrong.
No, you’re wrong.
I can’t be baited bud. That’s not how it works. I have the strength of conviction to say something and stick with it. So I won’t be indulging you by answering your bad faith bullshit.
Not happening.
I’m just here to walk you into the light so people can see what you’re up to and maybe stop taking you so seriously.
Nothing more.
But please, by all means. Continue with your smug little ethics lesson. Im enjoying it!
I voted for Obama, Clinton(at an empty polling place BTW), Biden, and will for Harris, all with no snap in my step and a funeral dirge in my heart, just so I can say I used what little power I have for harm reduction.
I’d rather not have fascist scapegoating along with our antisocial, rigged crony market capitalist economy we don’t get a vote on sucking us dry as we struggle to subsist. We only get a vote on how to address the social issue symptoms of that economy, if at all, and who to blame, and sadly it’s never the private shareholder class that should be.
Let’s be clear , we’re circling the drain. Inequality will continue to increase as greed induced climate change increases scarcity for the non wealthy masses, D or R, but at least with D, we won’t arbitrarily point the finger at brown people and hit them with sticks. That’s is the extent of our vote, whether to starve us or starve us while beating us.
We need a new constitution, one that punishes greed, with life imprisonment when applied to politics, and rewards prosocial activity. This country died under Reagan as anything more than a money printer for the tiny class of people that don’t see you or as human, just resources to extract MOAR value from.
But since that won’t happen, I’ll do the right thing without hope in the face of Armageddon, harm reduction. A vote to leave the water pumps running on this sinking ship, nothing more.
If anything, lefties shouldn’t be a single issue voter at all. They should be picking someone who might move toward that direction and have the chance to win, not abstaining.
As the famous word goes: Evil triumph when good men do nothing. You can’t abstain or do protest vote and expect anything to change under Trump, that single issue you hold so important will get worst, or even impossible.
Jay Shapiro explains this well in a video:
TL:DW?
In this video, I challenge the dismissive label of ‘single-issue voting’. I break down how a focus on an issue like genocide reveals deeper political and moral stakes, rejecting the idea that elections are merely a choice between the ‘lesser of two evils,’ and offering my reasoning—and hope—for refusing to play the game.
Well this “single issue” of land stealing, white supremacist subjugation of a people on their native land, ethnic cleansing and genocide, has only gotten worse with every election.
If we look at AIPAC they arent powerful because they influence who wins. They are powerful because they onfluence who looses.
That is why being pro genocide remains a staple of both parties policies. The only way to change that, is to punish the side that claims to not be pro genocide generally, so it has to become against genocide specifically.
And we had one year of trying to do that before the election, where people here and in othernplace vigorously defended being pro genocide, as challenging that before the election would be bad for the election.
We saw with Biden stepping down that challenging the dementia candidate was actually beneficial for the Democrats election chances, despite the same denial and backlash over pointing out Bidens failing mental capacities.
Now i am sure that these sentiments of immediately attacking people who wanted the Democrats to become a non genocide party when it was still possible to achieve that for the election, were stirred by AIPAC and other establishment actors, who would rather have Trump win than end genocide or get to meaningful progressive politics like proper healthcare and workers rights.
Can’t believe I missed you when I blocked all your little friends.
Most of what you say is exactly correct. The thing is, you have drawn a little outline of a box around this one situation, and allowed its glow to obscure all else outside the line.
Make the box bigger. Let the other issues that still count and effect people be inside the box.
Trans people need you to vote Harris, because they’ll be in extermination camps under Trump. Women in Mississippi whose pregnancies are going to tragically go bad next year need you to save their lives by voting Harris, because Trump will put the final nail in the coffin on abortion. Plenty of people will go homeless under Trump who would have hung on with higher wages and monopoly busting under Harris.
Being a single issue voter is a luxury that assumes everything else is basically solid, so we can press the one issue extra hard and let the rest of the garden tend itself a bit.
We are in the exact opposite of that situation in the 2024 presidential election. Dont confuse the shittiness of the whole situation with relatively much much better choice of Harris over Trump.
So women needlessly dying of miscarriages and trans people getting locked up in camps is fine so long as the democrats are punished.
Mass deportations with sketchy legal grounds are also fine because the democrats will totally learn their lesson this time.
Wake the hell up. You’re only punishing innocent americans. The democrats will be FINE if trump wins.
Okay, sure, but let’s say Trump win and you successfully punish Democrats, the results are…you also punished abortion right, people of colour, the lgbtq community, american with middle-eastern origin, worsening the immigrant deportation, and lastly, eliminating the chance of palestine-israel ceasefire and basically confirming the annexation of Gaza and West Bank. Isn’t that the thing you most concerned with? And now the blood is on your hands too. That doesn’t sounds like left-wing thinking to me at all.
I leave out a lot of thing, it’s really up to you to figure out what you will lose. I’m not even from US and another Trump term will undoubtedly affect the world in one way or another.
Ho Chi Minh knew all about America’s long history of genocide and slavery.
When the time came to work with the American OSS to fight the Japanese he helped the Americans.
Any questions?
Yeah one question, what did America do to Vietnam after that?
What were the Japanese doing then?
Are you saying we should allow the genocide in Palestine to continue, and add suffering in America too?
Im saying using Vietnam as an example why working with the US is good is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.
I think it was less, “the US is good” and more “one way or another someone is gonna fuck you over, sometimes the only choice you have is who”
Fine, give me a better example.
I’m not married to that analogy.
I could talk about the women and former slaves who worked for politicians who couldn’t promise them the vote.
Would that get the point across to you?
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