• kescusay@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You’re absolutely feeding into it, by depriving yourself entirely of a voice in elections. If you’re consistently voting 3rd party, that has exactly the same impact on who gets elected as dropping your ballots in the trash can instead of the ballot box.

    In your quest for ideological purity, you’ve achieved irrelevancy.

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Which is fine by me. I’d rather know I didn’t contribute to the mess everyone else is making.

      • kescusay@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s…

        Okay, I’m not going to beat around the bush. That’s stupid, selfish, and morally repugnant. You’re hurting the most vulnerable among us so you can pretend to meet some lofty ideal of political purity.

        I don’t have that luxury. You see, I have kids, and they have to grow up in whatever world we leave them. On top of that, my son is trans and my daughter is gay, so I have to vote pragmatically to protect their rights.

        Realistically, you know the next president is going to be a Democrat or a Republican. Other party candidates have a 0% chance of winning. Out of those party choices, which ones are currently pushing horrifying lies about people like my kids? I can pick the party that would literally murder them if they could get away with it… Or I can pick the party that wouldn’t.

        If I go your route, I’m silencing my ability to use my voice in the interests of my own children. Why would I do that?

        And why would you?

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This is why I stated you vote in local elections. They mean way more than on the presidential scale. And until the electoral college is removed. You’re vote means fuck all as well. It’s why Trump was elected in the first place.

          • kescusay@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Of course I vote in local elections. But you’re absolutely wrong that voting in presidential elections means “fuck all.” It’s in fact literally the only way we have any say in who is president. Every single state in the country delivers its electoral votes based on the votes of the people in that state. If you vote 3rd-party, enough people in your state have to also vote 3rd party for your vote to mean anything at all. But as long as they’re the dominant parties, if you vote for the Democrat or Republican, then your vote counts.

            • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Hillary won the popular vote, but trump took the electoral college votes… your vote means fuck all.

              • kescusay@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Missed my point. No one’s disputing the fact that the electoral college sucks. But not voting for the Democrat 100% guarantees the Republican wins.

                Each state apportions its electors using that state’s popular vote. It’s stupid, and gives backwards, rural voters more electoral power than they should have, but that doesn’t mean you have none at all.

                • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  No it does not. I wouldn’t vote for the Democrats anyways. So how again does my non vote exactly vote magically for the Republicans.

                  • kescusay@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Well, like I said earlier, you’re removing your own voice from politics because you have the luxury of ideological purity. I don’t. I have kids who actually have to live in this world. I can’t let outright evil scumbags who want my kids dead win just because their most viable opponents aren’t perfect.

                    But you’re apparently fine with that.

                • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Wow…no it does not. How you come to the conclusion that a vote for anyone but a dem magically allows the repub to win is just false.

                  • kescusay@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Math. That’s how I come to that conclusion. In any state that grants all its electors to one candidate who wins a plurality or more of the votes in that state (which is most of them) this is how it works:

                    Say you’ve got two major parties, the Kicking Puppies (KP) party and the Snuggling Puppies (SP) party. Normally, the snugglers always win except for in that one weird county we don’t like to talk about. Then along comes a new party: The Snuggling Kittens (SK) party. They’re a small party, but they work tirelessly to pull votes… from the SPs. I mean, it’s not like the KPs are going to vote for any snuggling party, right?

                    So come election time, the results look like this:

                    • Kicking Puppies: 36%
                    • Snuggling Puppies: 35%
                    • Snuggling Kittens: 29%

                    By a clear, resounding majority, the state does not want to start kicking puppies. Yet with our current election system, the rise of the kitten snugglers has resulted in the puppies getting kicked.

                    The problem is that mostly we have first-past-the-post and winner-take-all elections. Until that changes, small parties are always going to be spoilers for whichever major party most closely aligns with them politically. Does it suck? Of course. But that’s just the mathematical reality. Any vote going to a party candidate who cannot possibly win is one less vote for the one who can.

                    Until we change the system and start using something like ranked-choice or STAR voting, this is what we’re stuck with.

                    And Republicans know that, which is why it’s so common to find out that funding for the Green party in the United States is coming from Republicans. They’re well aware of the spoiler effect that can only exists because of our fucked system.

                    Now you’re aware of it, too.

                • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I know exactly how it works. I was replying on why your vote doesn’t matter much with the electoral college in place. It’s designed to give rural states as much a voice as larger city style states. But ok tell me again how Hillary winning the popular vote got her elected.