It kinda looks like your arguing that voting doesn’t work.
What about their arguing?
Ignoring tactical voting doesn’t work
And yet, they weren’t.
LOL and how do you suppose we make third parties viable? Thoughts and prayers?
Not by voting for people in elections they can’t win. Vote at the local and state level or in primaries for people who will enact voting reform.
Like who?
I don’t know where you live so I don’t have any relevant suggestions, sorry.
Name anyone anywhere
You know that’s not how elections work, but if you’re genuinely interested here are some lists of third-party candidates in the US:
You can find comparable lists on the sites of many more non-frivolous political third parties in which you may be interested, which can probably be found from their Wikipedia entries.
You know that’s not how elections work
WTF are you talking about? That’s exactly how they work, and its what the person I replied to suggested I do about it.
here are some lists of third-party candidates in the US:
This is just a list of people I’ve been repeatedly told in this thread that I should not vote for…?
This thread, specifically this comment, is telling you you should vote for alternative parties at state and local levels. The idea is to build up that third party’s actual presence in government from the ground up, which is a far superior strategy to splitting a critical presidential race and feeling like you’ve accomplished anything good.
I’m not gonna answer that question. I don’t have the perfect answer ready for you.
Instead I will tell you what happens when you vote third party in FPTP. Okay, you have a .nl TLD so I guess ssyou’re either in a much better electoral situation or just picked it because it’s cool, but I will use the example of the upcoming US presidential election.
Now, let’s say the race is really even and it’s over. Flipping just one of several key battleground states would’ve placed Harris in the lead, but unfortunately, Trump won. You look at the votes in your state: Trump won by under 600 votes. Nearly 100,000 people voted for a third party candidate that’s actually to the left of Harris. They would’ve preferred Harris, but because they voted third party, they elected Trump.
If this sounds familiar, that’s what happened in 2000. Al Gore could’ve won. Should’ve won. But 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader was further left of him and received a bunch of votes that needed to go to Gore. In Florida, he had nearly 100k votes, and the difference between Bush and Gore was literally triple digits. And it wasn’t even the only state where Gore lost because of the Spoiler Effect
It’s an inherent flaw of the FPTP system and yes, it sucks. It means a vote for a third party is a wasted vote.
I’m not gonna answer that question. I don’t have the perfect answer ready for you.
That’s okay, I don’t expect a “perfect” answer, but what you’re revealing about yourself by not putting forward an answer is that you don’t care about our wants, you’re just mad that we’re not doing what you want.
People tell me all the time voting is how to get what you want, so that’s what I’ve done and what I’ll continue to do.
the Spoiler Effect
Yes, I’m very familiar. Once again, I think this is just manipulating people into your desired outcome. I’m very happy to “spoil” my vote by advocating for someone I actually support, rather than throwing it away on someone I don’t. The fault lies with the system, not with me.
The fault lies with the system, not with me.
The fuckery inherent in the current system being not your fault does not absolve you from voting responsibly in context of the current system. If you are going to throw in a protest vote you are asserting your portion of responsibility for the practical end result of that vote.
It’s a good thing I vote responsibly then. An irresponsible vote would be one that perpetuates the current, broken system.
How does a strategic practical vote within the current system perpetuate it any more or less than a throwaway protest vote?
Are you asking me how protests work? Is that really something that requires explanation?
I’m asking you how, specifically, a protest vote and a strategic vote are any different in terms of perpetuating the shitty system currently in place.
Because there are more effective forms of protest that don’t guarantee with 99.9% accuracy that a fascist is elected if people vote for an alternate party (literally the case this year with the margins, and “dictator day 1”).
Voting should be pragmatic. There are a million other ways to protest/lobby, but honestly the Democrats of today are far more progressive than 20 years ago, because of people who understand the system and change it from the inside, like AOC/Bernie.
with 99.9% accuracy that a fascist is elected if people vote for an alternate party
Just straight up blatant lies here.
There are a million other ways to protest/lobby
I can’t think of a more powerful protest.
like AOC/Bernie.
I would vote for either in a heartbeat but I can’t because they won’t be on the ballot. They will step down and insist you vote for Kamala instead. And even if they were you would insist that I not vote for them anyway because it’s still “throwing away” my vote.
When either party puts forward a candidate without immediately-disqualifying horrendous traits, I will vote for them. But that absolutely never happens. It is almost always the worst-possible candidate, without even considering their political positions. They all accept massive donations from mega-PACs and a deplorable history of selfishness and lies.
Smaller elections. Get state representatives, win a few seats in the house, a few senators… When your party actually contributes to governing then you can discuss running for president. Until then you won’t beat Nader or Perot
And I will repeat the same thing I told the other person who said this. Who should I vote for? What politicians are supporting and advocating for reforming US elections? The answer is none of them, because they’d be lambasted and shunned for trying to upend the status quo.
Changing the voting system so that third parties are actually possible.
You need a cardinal voting system, otherwise you’ll fall prey to Durverger’s Law and Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.
I favor STAR, it’s the best system designed to date.
Changing the voting system so that third parties are actually possible.
And why would anyone do that when everyone takes time out of their day to express their approval for the existing 2 parties?
The problem is that these systems are way more complex and have edge cases where someone unpopular gets elected. Making major changes to a system that has worked for 248 years seems like a recipe for disaster.
and have edge cases where someone unpopular gets elected
As opposed to the current system, where someone unpopular always gets elected?
Making major changes to a system that has worked for 248 years
It hasn’t worked. It’s deeply flawed and we currently use the worst-possible process, rooted in ancient history.
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.
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.
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.
DNC komissars are using the same tactics, it is just politics 101… muhh side right, your side wrong bullshit while the two party regime is robbing us.
People who see no nuance are either zealots or paid shills aka bad faith actors, treat them as such.
Note how this conversion can’t be practically had in news or politics subs on lemmy…
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
More voters went from Hillary Clinton to John McCain in 2008 than went from Sanders to Trump in 2016 -Source
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”.
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.
Too bad the dems skipped the primary and just anointed their candidate.
Third parties are mathematically impossible until we ditch first past the post voting:
We need our vote to be a list, not a checkbox.
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.
Yeah, even getting a party 1 seat can be great. They are required to be heard. They can raise issues which the other parties must address.
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.
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)
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.
Yeah so proportional representation systems kinda suck. Israel has one
If you’re going to use a genocidal cult as your counter-example to democracy, why not just talk about the nazis?
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.
Edit - references:
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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.
Removed by mod
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™ 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.
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.
Who’s we?
The working class I guess? Certainly no one with power.
Americans. “We” already have preferential voting.
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.
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.
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
I don’t think they really existed yet in his era
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.
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.
Why don’t we ever hear about them making moves in those races?
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?
FPTP is not real democracy for this reason.
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.
It applies to a house built by slavers trying to keep everybody else out working in the fields.
You can just say “China”
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Lemmy is such a fickle place. Just a few days ago people were clamoring for Democrats to make a purely performative abortion vote that would be doomed to fail, merely because it would send an important signal to voters. Now people are skeptical that performative signal votes are sincere because they won’t go anywhere. Not saying you, specifically, but the whiplash is really frustrating.
Second, sure, it’s a low risk bill because they know it won’t go anywhere, but damn isn’t it good news that somebody is putting their money where their mouth is? Maybe we just need to primary in more Dems who will sign on and help push it through?
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.
I hear you. Didn’t mean for that to come across as an attack on you.
Apologies, in my previous comment I hadn’t read clearly enough and misunderstood. I have deleted it.
deleted by creator
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.
Political regime is captured by AIPAC, they must be forced to register as a foreign agent, otherwise genocide will continue until arabs are not longer living within Palestine.
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!
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
Sorry I wrote the wrong response initially
Think more, reactionary. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even algebra.
Yes however it will always be a two party system with first past the post.
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
Also
What’s fake about the effect a FPTP voting system creates?
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…
glances at the current state of the UK Labour party
It’s been known to work for a bit, but its also been known to collapse right back into the old two-party dichotomy. I think the hysteria around third parties baked into every election since the Bush Era SCOTUS-powered election theft in Florida is overblown, particularly when so much of the electorate lives in one-party dominant states. But I’ve also noticed successful outsider parties - the German Greens, France’s En March, the UK Liberal Dems - seem to embrace Corporationism as quickly as any of their German Christian Democrat / French Socialist / UK Tory peers.
And then there’s always this specter of fascism floating on the edge of the political establishment. Your Alternative for Germany, your National Front, and your UKIP create this existential crisis for liberal voters, such that they’re persistently terrorized into voting the “safe” centrist candidates in while ostracizing any candidate actually running on the things they say they want.
The Ruling Elite have the effective roadmap to keep the proles in line. Continuously finance a paper tiger on the right-flank of the election cycle. Make immigration a boogeyman issue that mobilizes the reactionaries within the state to turn out in droves. Then dangle a weak liberal as a release valve - a Starmer or Biden or Macron or Olaf Schultz - that nobody particularly likes, but the liberal-leaning base are told is “electable” because they can win the support of the conservative national media.
People are bombarded with this false choice - weak liberal or strongman conservative - decade after decade, all the way around the edge of the Atlantic, until the institutions these weak liberals are supposed to support are falling apart and the strongman conservatives can easily take over.
Its a doomed system.
Hey bro… just for vote my guy tho, trust me bro. You are not a bigot, is u?
The labour party is certainly flawed but you have to remember all they’ve given the people of the UK, in the brief times they’ve been in power (relatively speaking).
I’m not claiming it will fix everything but I would argue that the UK and just about every country thats had a labour movement that got into power benefited from it. Well, the 99% did.
Unless you know when the revolution is coming, it might be better to make alternative arrangements. Short of running to the hills and joining a commune, we’re quite deliberately not given any other option than to vote for better oppression.
The labour party is certainly flawed but you have to remember all they’ve given the people of the UK
You’re going to have to fill me in, because it seems Keir took office and immediately declared that there is no money left in the banana stand.
They couldn’t even restore funding to the H2 connection from Manchester to London, and that’s shit that was already paid for.
True or not, it would take something very special for the new Labour government to have already of given things to the people of the UK, seeing as Parliaments only been back for 2 weeks, don’t you think?
I mean, I have moderate expectations at best. I hope they don’t make things worse but, at the same time, I also think they’ll fall well short of achieving time travel.
Were you expecting time travel? I think you might be disappointed, if so.
I also think they’ll fall well short of achieving time travel.
It’s crazy when something as simple as rejecting the Cass Report and ending the instructional abuse of Trans People is equated with SciFi tiers of impossibility.
Actually most people are not aware. So its better to spell it out.
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.
Deny the two party regime legitimacy.
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.
You can speak with numbers, you are correct.
But sometimes small numbers can bring a lot of change in different democratic systems.
we don’t even need that many people to do third party vote to shake the regime. once it goes above few percent they will notice, in double digits they will have to start asking questions.
That’s laudable, but the way to do that is to vote in primaries, not to vote third party in the general election
i don’t agree with what you say
well, you should tell everyone that you agree so that the public thinks you’re associated with me, and then try to change me whenever we’re alone
How about you get a fucking therapist and work on your own issues like the rest of us, thx.
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.
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.
Shittiest take on this community by far.
It’s an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.
Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn’t grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn’t what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.
Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.
Love shit like this because you all lack the same fundamental goddamn knowledge.
It’s up to the states who goes on the ballot. There are only three political parties in the United States with enough support to get on all 51 (50 States + DC) ballots. Those are the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Libertarians. The Libertarians are just as fascist as the Republicains, but they don’t have the guise of Christianity to cover it up, so they get pretty few votes. Beyond those three, It is entirely dependent on the state who you get to vote for. I, for example, get four choices in my state. The big two, the libertarians, and the Legalize Marijuana Now parry. The latter is a small party who’s soul goal is getting marijuana legalized. Wanna vote for the Green party? Tough shit. I suppose write ins are an option, but there’s roughly 200,000,000 people who vote, so good luck convincing even half of them to write your name down without a party supporting you.
In other words, “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a mindset. For a lot of us, it’s literally the only choice.
“In other words, “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a mindset. For a lot of us, it’s literally the only choice.”
You’re the reason the problem exists, you fucking idiot.
Good job not reading the post lmao
Like I am literally telling you there are only three options on the ballot and two of them are significantly worse than the third.
this instance is well known for takes like these when it comes to politics unfortunately. its better to not engage with any sort of political posts on here.
They have a first past the post parliamentary system, derived from the UK. The US has a separation of powers between its executive branch and its legislative branch.
The way to build third parties is by reforming the democratic system state by state to have a ranked choice system open non-partisan primary to select the top two final candidates followed by a general election between these two candidates for each election to elect a representative or president.
It helps mitigate the flaws of the ranked choice system to have it stop at the final two and let the voters choose between these final two choices. It helps get candidates that are at the center of voter opinion distribution.
This means the hard work of mobilizing together and working across partisan lines, recruiting the majority of Americans that are pro-democracy in each and every state.
The way to build third parties is by reforming the democratic system state by state to have a ranked choice system
Spending decades to tinker with the mechanics of an election system that excludes 40% of the population via its baseline construction? Seems like you’re going to keep getting the same results.
What good is Ranked Choice Voting in a state like Florida, where 1.7M people are excluded through the state’s Felony Disenfrachisement system? FFS, the state voted on an amendment to reform Felony Disenfrachisement and the legislature just cancelled it out. Gerrymandering means you’ll never see a non-conservative state senate and you’re unlikely to see more than a moderate conservative occupy the Governor’s mansion.
That’s not a FPTP problem, its a problem of targeted state-wide ethnic disenfranchisement.
I tried making a similar argument on Facebook in 2016 when Trump won.
I didn’t vote for either of the top two, but I did vote 3rd party. I voted on someone that i felt would be just as good a fit as the other two at that time. I wanted change, and tried to get so-called friends to change the way they thought about voting. Some of those people were the kind to say “my vote doesn’t matter. They’ll elect whomever they want in office.”
I even went so far as to draw a very shitty comic that pointed out the other options on the ballot, and how we as a society could push for political change BY VOTING.
Sigh… I was called a classless human being by an immigrant from the UK I went to college with. Her friends, and even one professor kept blowing up my DMs calling me trash for not supporting Clinton. That election really showed me the true colors of people. Since then i just tell people i am “unaffiliated” when they ask which party i support.
Vote for my guy OR ELSE!
I plan to Vote for the Head Cheeto in Charge this year. His saving grace is Tulsi Gabbard.
just write him in a “Cheeto” ;)
aka vote 3p
There aren’t any good options for 3p this time around :'(
Well depending on what your goals are… any 3p is a fuck you to the two party regime.
Voting for either is a vote FOR THE REGIME.
That’s my 2 cents on the issue.
This is true, but the one i would have voted for filed the wrong form to be put on the ballot and is disqualified. So idk if i trust that one in office.
