I think both Dems and Republicans suck in very different and not proportionate ways, but I am also a very big proponent of voting. Go vote! It’s your duty.
I find that the thing people need to remember is that the general election is purely damage control time. For actual change, and getting candidates that don’t suck, the work needs to already be done by the time the election rolls around.
Politics is marketing. Governing is the slow boring of hard boards. You only get there with dilligence, conviction, and commitment to the idea that you are planting the trees that will shade your grandchildren.
Politics is marketing.
I find OP’s post functionally defeatest. It hinges on this theory that there really is only one choice every election season. You must vote Democrat - whether it’s Sherrod Brown or Eric Adams - and you can never question how these officials behave during an election season.
The Dems don’t have any real duty towards their voters, or even an obligation to do a particularly good job of governing. They can just point at Republicans, say “Worse! Vote for us or that’s who you get”, then blast people with anxiety-inducing advertisement until folks panic.
The end result of this system is one in which Dems win by maximizing anxiety, rather than improving quality of life for anyone.
There are vastly larger numbers of choices in local and legislative races. And I encourage people to work hard to more variety in local and legislative races to push your values instead of only checking in every 4 years. The primary is the key time to push for who you want as the candidate.
During the actual election though, with FPTP, it unfortunately is that reductive. You are stuck choosing who is the lesser evil or who you want to push for change. The November presidential election is like public transportation. You may not like the conditions of the train or the exact destination the bus ends up at, but you take the bus that gets you closer to your destination.
I’d say most people think a wasted vote in a contentious election with a racist, rapist, fascist who wants to end democracy is stupid.
If you were to say, I don’t know, be working with local parties at the town, city, and state level to grow them and get them into positions, making them viable for the presidency down the road - not stupid! Awesome, in fact.
Telling people vote for a 3rd party in this presidential election?
Stupid. Very, very stupid. Yes, it will be frowned upon. Because its stupid. And people should be telling you how stupid it is. Because it is.
If you want to organize and elect socialists at local levels of power who form coalitions with other left wing groups to coordinate against conservatives, I will help you do it.
If you do nothing but whine online and avoid politics to vote for a socialist candidate every 4 years during the presidential elections in a FPTP system, you’re a moron.
I can see you understand the flaws of First past the post voting quite well. We are going to need people like you to change this mathematically flawed voting system.
Feel free to stop by my ask lemmy post to discuss replacing First-past-the-post voting in your state when you’re ready. Thanks.
In my experience, most people voting for 3rd parties care more for their own sense of morals than they do with actual outcomes. This election has not changed that in the slightest, and it’s even more open and obvious when the question of ‘ok, then what happens?’ comes up. I’ve been told by a supposed anti-genocide person that it’s ok if Palestinians get genocide harder because of the Democrats win they won’t pay attention to the progressives.
Like, how can you take someone seriously that is openly advocating for a path that makes their cause worse?
If third parties wanted to actually do some good in the country, you’d see them running locally and encouraging either ranked-choice voting or STAR voting (Score, then automatic runoff).
The fact that you only ever hear of third parties every four years really illustrates what their true objectives are.
The fact that you only ever hear about ranked choice voting when you tell Democrat you’re thinking of voting third part illustrates what their true objectives are.
(Also, I see third candidate parties in every midterm and local election I vote in at all levels of government. I have no idea what you’re talking about).
(Also also, anyone reading this who lives in a swing state and hasn’t voted yet, please, just votes for Harris. She sucks, but Trump is even more dangerous now that he has a staff full of enablers and an actual plan. We have to beat him.)
Not having RCV doesn’t make anything worse.
Promoting third-parties without RCV in place does.
Third parties run at all levels of government and they would actually benefit from eliminating first past the post polling far more than the major parties.
The bitter fact is that a winning candidate has no incentive to reform the voting system that put them in power.
Why would a dominant party want to give any competitor an advantage?
I hate to say it, but the only way I could see it happen is if both parties simultaneously see significant 3rd/4th party challengers acting as spoilers. In that situation, RCV would be the short term solution to remove the effect of spoiler votes. Basically the situation the UK is in right now with both the Lib Dems and Reform.
I see no Green party members on the local ballot to enact this. They are starting at the top, which doesn’t help.
Why is it called score, then automatic runoff instead of star, then automatic runoff?
I’m not an expert in it, but according to the Wikipedia link, they score the possible candidates to get down to two, and then they do an automatic runoff.
Yup, they know they’re outnumbered so they try every trick in the book to stop the Democrat bloc surplus from voting.
Some of us are actually not Democrats or Republicans because we really think both sides are bad in different ways. I still voted though.
It’s still worth it to register for one of the major parties to vote in their primary and push them towards your actual politics. For example, I wouldn’t consider myself “a Democrat”, but I am registered to the party and I vote as progressive as I can in primaries.
From what I’ve read, the two times Trump won, many Democrats felt that they were denied this choice, which left them disillusioned, and they didn’t vote. I don’t think that’s the main reason for Trump’s victory, but what you touched on was definitely a factor in the Democrats’ loss.
In a lot of places, you pretty much have to register for a party to have any say in the local elections. Where I live if there is a primary for an office it is guaranteed whoever wins the Republican primary is going to win the office, so if you want to have a vote in that election you have to register Republican.
I think everyone should get a vote in every primary. If there is a Republican and Democratic primary then you should get to cast a vote for a Republican candidate and a Democrat candidate. I think this would result in a better selection of nominees for offices.
And some of us who are that way understand that in FPTP there can only be a winner from one of the major parties and we are choosing who we want to fight to push for changes.
I always vote for who I perceive as the lesser evil of the two. This year is no different. I’m not excited about what either candidate wants to fight for. I will oppose whoever is elected on multiple fronts.
For anyone who already knows the truth of this meme, or who would like to know more about the vast methods of deception and how to spot and counter them, this DEFCON 32 talk is incredible.
DEF CON 32 - Counter Deception: Defending Yourself in a World Full of Lies - Tom Cross, Greg Conti
The Internet was supposed to give us access to the world’s information, so that people, everywhere, would be able to know the truth. But that’s not how things worked out. Instead, we have a digital deception engine of global proportions. Nothing that comes through the screen can be trusted, and even the things that are technically true have been selected, massaged, and amplified in support of someone’s messaging strategy.
Deception isn’t just about narratives - we see deception at every layer of the network stack, from spoofed electromagnetic signatures, to false flags in malware, to phony personas used to access networks and spread influence. They hide in our blindspots, exploit our biases, and fill our egos while manipulating our perceptions.
How do we decide what is real? This talk examines time-tested maxims that teach the craft of effective deception, and then inverts those offensive principles to provide defensive strategies. We’ll explore ways to counter biases, triangulate information sources, detect narratives, and how hackers can build tools that can change the game.
