this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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What attitude? You asked where we learned the adage that "voting third party is throwing your vote away", I stated that it was evident in the basic math of the First Past the Post mechanism. It's not a notion to be challenged, it's a mathematical inevitability. The FPTP system is what obstructs free democracy. The futility of third parties is only a symptom of FPTP elections. Attacking the notion of third party futility is ignoring the symptom. The only cure is changing from FPTP to a different electoral model.
And you will change to this different model how? By voting?
Yes, that's how representative democracy works. Do you have an alternative method which yields better results?
So then there shouldn't be any issue with me voting for socialists, since they are who represent me and my views best. Sounds good.
I'm the primaries? Of course! In the general? Of course not, did you completely ignore everything that's been said? Splitting the vote on the left only hurts us. The only people who advocate leftists voting third party are people who don't understand FPTP, and people who want the left to lose.
My ballot must be different then yours, I don't see any leftist parties who represent "us" in the general election at the federal level.
I see two front-runners in the general election at the federal level. One is a centrist neoliberal party, the other is a fascist party. My interests lie with the fascist party losing. Since our system is FPTP, that goal is achieved by voting for the lesser evil. Voting third party increases the odds of the fascist party winning, so that is unaligned with my interests.
If you think acknowledging basic math is offensive I don't know how to communicate the principle here. Your basic premise is either uninformed, or a deliberate bad faith attempt to divide the left.
Pretending that the principles of FPTP are different doesn't make them so. As I said before, the cure is ranked choice. The mechanism of getting there is consistent turnout in primaries and all elections, especially local. That's the only way to push the Democratic party toward ranked choice, which is the only reasonable way to achieve ranked choice, which is the only way to make third parties viable.
Voting third party in FPTP only splits the vote and hurts the left. Your point about he media narrative, while not false, is not particularly relevant. The main issue is FPTP.
Thank you, I will try my hardest.
Presently, the biggest obstacle to that goal is the combination of ignorance and propaganda affecting the upcoming election cycle, which has been empowering the right and fragmenting the left. The goodness of the one I am going to have is largely proportional to leftist turnout, and largely inversely proportional to the percentage of leftists confused by that ignorance and propaganda.