I voted for Harris yesterday, and I’ll be voting for Harris again tomorrow. Just kidding. Turns out the dead person whose identity I stole wasn’t registered to vote. 😞
You make jokes, but tomorrow this comment will be on FOX as proof them libs are cheating…
Well, they read it in a forum where anybody can write anything, so it must be true. They are truly the best at fair and balanced ripoartign.
Support ranked choice voting
I didn’t actually realize the numbers were that high for her… Ffs.
They know what they’re doing. The elections in swing states are always down to razor margins. The right spoiler is almost a guaranteed win for the opponent :/
Third parties help the democrats because the biggest third party is more right-aligned.
In Michigan Gary Johnson got 172,136 votes, in Pennsylvania he got 146,715, and in Wisconsin he got 106,674. If all Greens voted Clinton and all Libertarians voted Trump then New Mexico would’ve only been won by Clinton with around 1,000 votes, Colorado would’ve also been nearly Trump. Nevada, New Hampshire, and Minnesota would’ve been won by Trump. Maine might’ve gone majority Trump.
Third parties certainly know what effect they have. Their motivation is not to make the second party candidate win. Their motivation is to change the first party candidate.
According to Hotelling’s Law, a two-party political system with FPTP voting results in candidates that are very similar. This is why the Democrats won’t run real progressives for most offices, and why Sanders was forced out in 2016 with the excuse that he wasn’t “electable” enough.
Third parties running for president aren’t trying to win. They’re trying to eat some of the votes on their side, thus pulling the main party candidates toward that third party candidate to reclaim those votes.
Third parties certainly know what effect they have.
Third party candidates that are running specifically in presidential elections and nothing else.
Third parties that actually want to move the needle participate in local elections, caucus with a major party for ballot access, etc. (WFP)
Their motivation is not to make the second party candidate win.
Bullshit.
Green’s team literally stated the goal was for Kamala to lose.
Citation for that?
https://www.nj.com/politics/2024/10/harris-vs-trump-spoiler-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud.html
You can find others if you’d like to look, quite easily.
Edited to add the quote from Sawant:
We are not in a position to win the White House, but we do have a real opportunity to win something historic, we could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan.
Its pretty clear the goal there.
Jesus fucking christ. I’m so tired of the American political landscape
I have no idea why this is being downvoted. Thanks for the info.
They weren’t. Check out PA. Trump won by 68K, Stein got 48K, Trump would still take PA, the EC totals would be 280 Trump, 258 Clinton. The whole thing is just a lie.
Can we get a nsfw tag? That twat’s neckgina is making me sick.
Eugh thanks 😬
Dems would rather support genocide than win an election.
I mean, Trump supports the genocide too. If he were president, we’d probably have troops there helping out. I don’t see how this is even a choice.
Maybe if everyone that posted threads like this voted 3rd party, maybe 3rd party would get enough votes for once to push a reelection and get on the radar? Instead of trying to get people to vote for 2 candidates that don’t support their needs and/or wants.
You do realize that the winning president has to win at least 50% of the electoral college vote in order to win. If no one president does then the top 3 candidates go to the house of representatives to be chosen. Just the media if this happened would finally put a third party on the radar, even if they only won one state.
Ranked choice voting eliminates the concept of spoiler candidates/parties.
The duopoly of power won’t add ranked choice voting
People said this about weed. We literally had two states add it in like the last 10 years. Once a few more states pass RCV via initiative we’ll start seeing legislatures take it up on their own.
People said this about weed
Weed is not the good argument you think it is lmao. The fact it took decades to legalize and people are still imprisoned over it is a huge L, not a W
Well the point is that lack of 2 party support doesn’t mean it won’t happen, it just means its a slower, longer push.
Edit: I would also say there’s likely less built-in opposition for RCV - even hard conservative states like idaho are fighting ballot initiatives to expand RCV this year. 2 states are voting on it. Only 9 states have banned RCV (vs federal bans for MJ)
You are correct. Also, OP is correct.
North America’s electoral systems are so broken. It’s painful to see so much negativity, frustration, and fear directed at third parties in general. If that same energy was directed towards building a ranked choice voting system with proportional representation, like single transferable voting (STV), the duopolies would crumble and we could all actually vote for whoever we want without having to worry we might end up with the worst candidate winning.
That’s great. I Agree.
We got four more years to do that, if Trump doesn’t win.
We’ve had tons of time to change voting systems.
All the third parties couldve banded together to get it done. Ya know. With all their existing seats of power in federal, state, and local government.
Oh wait.
Hint. Hint.
A third party would be worthless if it won federal office right now. It would be roadblocked every step of the way.
I agree that our voting system needs an overhaul. But don’t try to do it by electing a third party president. It’ll never work, and if it did, they would be falling flat on their face for four more years and paint a terrible picture for the future of all third parties.
A protest vote means absolutely nothing, except that it helps the least-aligned primary party power. You are bolstering your opponent to do so. Literally cutting off your nose to spite your face.
It doesn’t need to start with the federal level. There’s a growing amount of states that have already adopted some form of ranked choice voting and some of those have also adopted a proportional variant. Progress is being made in some places at lower levels, but it’s slow. Other states have banned it unfortunately.
So then what is to be gained by voting for Stein? A clean conscience about the atrocities abroad?
That’s cool. Remember that when there are even more atrocities here against your brown and LGBTQ neighbors.
Remember that when there’s more middle-class homelessness because there’s not enough contractors with all the deported.
Assuming their original country takes them back. If not, they stay here as detainees. Now we are paying to host them in the prison system. But, at least since illegal immigration is a crime, they can essentially be near-free labor thanks to the 13th amendment. Is that the right way to fix the housing crisis?
Not saying we can’t be world police. That position benefits us greatly and give us tons of soft power. But maybe we should worry about keeping our own house from caving in on itself before we start trying to fix someone else’s.
I’m Canadian. I can’t vote for Stein. Nor would I under your current system if I was able to. It’s tragic though that your federal system funnels your people into just 2 options.
Canada’s electoral systems are not much better but at least we have viable third party options up here that have been able to exert pressure and influence our governments and bring attention to important issues. It’s still first past the post, and that should change. Third parties can do good work in the right environment if you let them. We recently got the beginnings of a national pharmacare and dentalcare programs from our social democratic / democratic socialist / progressive party working with the liberals.
At lower levels of government, the US does have third parties other than the Greens that have been putting in work between presidential elections. Vermont’s Progressive Party and New York’s Working Families Party are worth checking out.
Never forget that in 2016 13% of Trump voters voted for Obama in 2008/12. Maybe the Democratic Party can share some blame, instead of just shaming the voters.
Move right to appeal to Republicans
They don’t vote for you, lose anyway
Noooooo this is all Jill’s fault.
Your username says Seattle but your political views are more rural Washington.
I live there- and trust me when I say, I get second-hand embarrassment on behalf of this city from reading their rhetoric . Seattle is a lovely and very politically literate city and in no way is represented by their… ideology.
I’m actually voting for Jill who might as well be a Lenin for how far right Harris is.
Don’t worry, I believe you.
https://www.nj.com/politics/2024/10/harris-vs-trump-spoiler-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud.html
We are not in a position to win the White House, but we do have a real opportunity to win something historic, we could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan.”
Former Seattle City Council member and prominent Indian-American political activist Kshama Sawant made that clear at a recent event.
The irony, right?
A broken system gives you broken candidates.
If this were true then American politics really are terrible. Minority should hold seats. America needs to revisit representation.
This is the way.
It’s actually not entirely true, it only counts stein as the only 3rd party (the libertarian candidate in PA got 3x as many votes as her, I’d bet those 3rd party votes wouldn’t have gone to Clinton) AND doesn’t report factual numbers.
It’s just not true.
That said unfortunately voting for a 3rd party candidate is largely useless in the USA and the forces trying to get their opponents voters to vote 3rd party are probably more overwhelming then the forces actually compelling folks to vote 3rd party.
FPTP needs to die in the USA.
Yeah, the numbers in PA are just wrong. Trump beat her by 68K and Stein got 48K. Even if Stein hadn’t been on the ballot and every single one of her voters went to Clinton, she still would have lost PA and the Electoral College. This entire post is just a lie.
People get weird close to the election.
People voting green party did so for a reason. Not everyone fits into perfectly shaped boxes for the 2 party system. Many vote 3rd party for leverage for policy change. The narrative of picking the lesser evil doesn’t always apply to the narrative of the individual voter.
Hi. Looking at your recent post history, I think you might be a right-winger pretending to be a socialist who is arguing for not engaging in this election in order to ensure Trump wins. If that is true, you’re unpleasant.
We are literally vote in a Hitler figure who is going to build concentration camps and wreck the country or stick with sanity. The lesser of two evils is necessary until the second major party stops running Hitler.
yes, dont voters know that a war criminal abroad vs a hitler at home is a way better deal for them? AIPAC has worked very hard with the DNC to set this up and American voters are just ungrateful and stupid.
/s
If Trump is Hitler, what is Kamala? At least third parties entertain ending wars
Hi. Looking at your recent post history, I think you might be a right-winger pretending to be a socialist who is arguing for not engaging in this election in order to ensure Trump wins. If that is true, you’re unpleasant.
Third parties that can never win can in turn not make policy decisions.
A lot of things about foreign policy are based on realpolitik, not ideology. As long as you’re not in power, you can ignore realpolitik, and therefore can promise anything you want. Once in power, things are different.
Did people who voted for Stein get what they wanted by electing Trump?
Did Democrats get what they wanted by running Clinton?
No, she didn’t win. Did that sound like a cool comeback in your head?
They did manage that the democrats will never run with hilary again -> If both choices in the current election are shit you can at least try to influence the next one.
Also fuck 'muricas election system. Everything resulting in a 2 Party system is no real democracy.
No, they got what they wanted by bringing third party candidates to the discussion table so more people would vote third party in future elections.
One day we might even be able to elect a candidate who isn’t the “lesser evil”
One day we might get stv approval voting instant runoff or one of the methods that allow 3rd parties to win push for that at the state level instead of fantasies that can never work
One day we might even be able to elect a candidate who isn’t the “lesser evil”
Literally impossible in the US unless one of two things happen. Either:
-
Both the current major parties fracture, and the resulting two parties that will occur thereafter align themselves on axes that are dissimilar to the ones that the current two parties are aligned on, or
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Laws are passed to remove FPTP and winner take all so that not voting for a Republican or Democrat has an actual influence on the vote.
The current system in the US is statistically proven to result in two majority parties controlling the government. The only effect that voting third-party does now is to spoil the votes for the majority-party candidate most closely aligned with that third-party.
The Labour party in the UK won as a third party in a duopoly system
The rise of Labour happened because of a change in the voting system. The Reform Act of 1918 got rid of property qualifications which previously hindered Labour’s base from being able to vote. And even then Labour and the Liberals competing for votes resulted in a decade of conservative government.
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Picture a situation where various political parties vie to unseat the Republicans. With more representative electoral systems, voters could select their preferred candidates, while still counting their vote against the Republican party even if their choice doesn’t win, all without the spoiler effect. Since voting methods are set at the state level, we don’t need to wait for federal reforms; some states have already enacted electoral changes. For instance, Alaska recently chose a more moderate conservative over Sarah Palin due to Ranked Choice voting.
Who would oppose having multiple opportunities to diminish Republican power? The Democratic Party would. In blue states, they could replace First Past The Post voting with a system that eliminates the spoiler effect. Yet, year after year, election after election, Democrats remain inactive on passing state level electoral reform in the states they control.
Republicans are moving to protect FPTP voting in red states. Why do the democrats want to use the voting system republicans prefer?
Its not that democrats dont know about the flaws in the voting system either. Just mention voting for a third party to any Democrat, and they’ll readily acknowledge the weaknesses of the voting system. Comments about the Green Party here will further illustrate their understanding of this issue.
If democrats understanding the problem, yet refuse to fix it, can only mean one thing. The Democrats prefer the country balancing over a fire pit of fascism rather than truly competing for our votes. They would rather this country be lost to authoritarianism then to play on a even playing field.
Party over country at all costs.
I agree with everything you’ve said except that the folks here upset at seeing third party votes help Trump win are NOT the same people refusing to fix the FPTP problem.
/* in countries with a broken democracy
