this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024
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The politcal system means that voting for a third party means you're not actually opposing fascism. It has the exact same effect as not voting at all. While it's not supporting fascism, it's also not opposing fascism. So it's just being fascism neutral.
It would be nice if you had a system where a third party vote wasn't the same as not voting but that kind of system will never happen if you continue to waste your vote.
I live in a blue state. Using that same logic, my vote for a Democrat is a wasted vote, because my state is going to go blue whether I vote for them or not.
If you actually want a potential President Kamala Harris to have some good legislation to sign, you might want to consider voting for congressional candidates that will write the kind of legislation you want. And if you want to end the Electorial College bullshit, you might consider voting for state reps. And while you're there, you may as well vote for Harris if for no other reason than you might someday say to your grandkids that you voted for the first woman President. That's a better story to tell than explaining about how you were too angsty about "the system" to bother going out to vote.
Where did I say that I wasn't going to vote? I'm voting Green. If there's a good Democrat running for Congress, I'll vote for them, too. This isn't complicated.
Voting Green has the exact same effect as not voting. Yeah, it shouldn't be that way, but it's the way it is. There's wanting the ideal system where third party votes matter and there's pretending it already is an ideal system
You don't get to an ideal system by voting for people that won't have any power to change things. You make a difference by writing to and calling the people who do have power and ensure the people you call are at least sympathetic to what you want.
It is indeed not that complicated.
Why would the winning party change the system that compels you to vote for them?
A ranked choice type system would mean a third party wouldn't be just something that screws up elections. In fact it would probably really benefit Democrats as people who might not go to vote otherwise might go vote green as their top pick and then vote Democrat as their second pick. If the Green candidate won, that's someone they could make some compromises with to get legislation passed. If the green candidate loses, then many of their votes would go to the Dem candidate making it more likely they would win.
Twice in this century a GOP candidate has won the EC without winning the popular vote. So it's obvious why the Democrats would want to get rid of that.
But as it stands voting third party (or not voting) is just letting everyone else decide how things should be. The way it works now is you vote for the candidate most likely to care about your concerns (and who could feasibly win) and write to them and tell them what you want. Yeah it's a pain in the ass to write to a representative, but it's more likely to have an effect than anything you write on the internet. Be polite, tell them the things you want that can be reasonably be implemented. Also you're probably going to have to vote in many elections to get what you want. But if it's something you really care about you're willing to vote in as many elections and write to your rep as many times as needed to get it done.
It takes time, but it's more effective than doing nothing.
This is a naive understand of how the Democratic Party wants to function.