Stein wasn't even the only third party candidate stealing votes. I voted for Gary Johnson with the Libertarian party as a "protest vote". Glancing at national results, he had almost three times as many votes as Stein did.
I was 100% the moron this meme is targeted towards. I voted for Harris yesterday.
/* in countries with a broken democracy
Support ranked choice voting
I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of these voters. Maybe I'm just consuming the wrong media, but it feels like third-party voters get 50x the blame nonvoters get for ruining elections with probably something like a thousandth of the population. I basically never see this discussion call out both third-party voters and nonvoters equally.
I keep seeing third-party voters maligned for thinking a candidate has hope to win a national election, I see so many arguments to address why third-party candidates can't win. In spite of that, I have never come across any community anywhere where people collectively believe these candidates actually have a chance. People who consume crazy media can believe crazy things, that's why MAGA is a thing, but there's a whole Fox News etc media machine feeding those people. Is there a forum somewhere with more than ten people where there's a consensus that a third-party candidate might actually win? None of the third party voters I have known or met irl believed this, and I would be shocked if they're all weird exceptions.
Like, please, where are these people congregating to spread the ludicrous idea that a third-party candidate can win a national election? Looking on the recent green party posts on their subreddits, the only thing I see even close is a thread with a headline about "candidates are electable if people vote for them", where the furthest they go in the comments is a few people talking about how big a deal it would be for the party if they got 5% nationally, and a couple other people replying to say the greens won't even get 1% this year but the election is still very important because of some nonsense about incremental gains.
It feels like we've imagined a brainwashing machine that does not exist in reality, rather than admit to the existence of protest votes. Condemning protest votes means condemning protest nonvotes equally, and we'll never have sufficient information about protest nonvoters to reasonably make a claim about how they would have voted. That would severely muddy any attempts to assign blame for election results.
If you're trying to convince these voters to act differently, the way to do that would be to address the arguments they're actually making, like the incremental gains nonsense. If you're addressing arguments they haven't been making at all, then it's worth asking whether you're trying to convince someone other than them.
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.
So early voting has started in some states. Get out and vote people
A broken system gives you broken candidates.
These numbers are
notcorrect according to NY TimesEdit: I can’t math
G.R.E.E.N.
GET
REPUBLICANS
ELECTED
EVERY
NOVEMBER
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.
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.
Every one so excited to back the lesser of two evils and wondering why things are the way they are
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.
Then maybe Kamala should stop glazing Israel's d. so much and actually do something to win back michigan muslims. They'll either vote third party or won't vote at all. The trumpists will vote Trump anyway. This post is purely delusional if you think you'll win some voting groups back just by dragging third party candidates through the mud. Especially voting groups so deeply involved in some issues that your beloved candidate clearly doesn't care about at all.
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.
over 130 million votes wasted in 2016. We are fucked.
America will get its civil war and you guys will pay for the last 50 years external policy.
Don't mind me, just sweeping þrough to prune ð propoganda weeds on ðeir latest block/ban dodge accounts!
There you go again. Blame third parties for your own failure. Keep doing it, tell yourself it's true.
Agreed. Hopefully Democrats put more effort into earning their votes.
Spoiler effect is fun
Voting democrat or republican gets you a divided republic. The repercussions or their actions are about to reverberate through society. I fucking warned you.
If you don’t like stein, consider voting party for socialism and liberation instead.
They’re running Claudia de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to israel.
I found out recently that they’re on the ballot or have official write in status in 42 states, so unless you’re in Alaska, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Georgia or Pennsylvania go for it!
E: forgot Nevada. They’re not officially recognized in Nevada.
Always remember it's like fantasy football 🏈!
Yeah! I'm voting Harris! Yeah!
If she wins.... meaning that the actual electors from the unelected body called the electoral college, actually vote for her and she gets to win.... Then I would have picked the correct option! It's just like the Lotto! In election day you mark you Lotto ticket, then you wait for the election to be called..... meanwhile in the Lotto, they spin a wheel full of carefully balanced balls. They, the electoral college, pick the balls and show you the list of balls... Then you check your ticket and if you elected what they elected, then you won! You won! I can't believe it! I can't believe it because the electors can choose whoever they want! Yey! Democracy!
To convince Greens or Carlins (people who don't vote because the Democrats are still too evil from their point-of-view) to vote for Democrats, you need to understand yourself and them. Once you do that, you'll be able to offer more convincing arguments to support your position.
If you're voting for Democrats, you possibly agree with the following scale of evilness:
- 10 Hitler
- 9 Stalin
- 8.5 Trump
- 8 Republicans and people who vote for them
- 7
- 6
- ~5-3 elected Democratic party members
- 2
- 1 you
- 0 Jesus
The thing is that some Greens see the world very differently:
- 10 people making the biosphere unlivable thru overpopulation
- 9 factory farmers and commercial fishing companies
- 8
- 7 Hitler, Stalin
- 6
- 5 George W. Bush, Putin
- 4 Trump, Republicans, and people who vote for them
- 3 Gore, Obama, Democrats, and people who vote for them
- 2
- 1 Sanders
- 0
- -1
- -2
- -3
- -4 Green party
- -5
- -6
- -7 them
- -8
- -9
- -10
The Greens' (and Carlins') priorities are very different. They may think that choosing to make the biosphere unlivable is the worst thing you can do, because without a biosphere that supports life, nothing else matters.
As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. […] The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/
They may think that torturing trillions of fish to death every year, and enslaving hundreds of billions of animals in torturous conditions every year, is worse than all genocides and wars in all of history combined. They think that voting for someone who enables even a single genocide is a line they won't cross.
They may think that given the choice between popular Hitler, popular Stalin, and unpopular Gandhi; they'd rather vote for Gandhi than the popular lesser evil, because that specific evil is omnicidally evil. That it's better to vote for good and fail, than it is to vote for evil and succeed.
The Green Party thanks Lemmy for all the publicity it has brought to the Jill Stein campaign
