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voting for Jill Stein or Cornel West is voting against Trump AND Biden
Voting for YOUR MOM is also voting against Trump AND Biden.
Except not in a first past the post system. Voting 3rd party is just a vote for whichever of the two main parties you like least. Sucks, but that's reality.
this is election misinformation. votes for so-called third parties are counted as votes for those candidates. only votes for Republicans get counted as Republican votes and only votes for Democrats get counted as Democrat votes.
It's not misinformation to state how things end up functioning in practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law?wprov=sfla1 It's a well known thing for anyone who's studied the tiniest bit of political science (or you know, was around in 2000 for that US election).
The way the votes get counted only matters insofar as their tangible real world outcome. The fact that your individual vote went to a specific third party or even abstaining ends up being irrelevant. The outcomes are the same and the party you prefer least is more likely to win. Again, I'm not advocating that this is a good system, but it is our current reality and stating that to be misinformation is ignorant at best or straight up manipulative propaganda at worst.
>The way the votes get counted only matters insofar as their tangible real world outcome. The fact that your individual vote went to a specific third party or even abstaining ends up being irrelevant.
this sounds like misinformation AND voter suppression: telling people their vote won't count.
shame on you.
I won't disagree with you that it is voter suppression in the sense that it supresses votes for third parties, but I didn't set up the system so maybe channel your anger towards more productive means other than shooting the messenger. The way things stand today, that's how the math works out if you care to check the link I shared.
i'd say telling people their votes won't count is shitty, especially when they are literally counted.
I never said they won't be counted, just that it doesn't matter if your goal is to get as similarly minded a group elected. You made up that claim, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that's because we view the goal of voting through very different lenses. If that isn't your goal and it's just to "see number go up" as it seems then sure you're 100% right. Depends on what is important to you. To me practical results matter more than getting to feel morally smug.
Either way, lots of your responses (not just to me in this thread) are sounding right out of right wing playbooks so I'm gonna say so long since I don't think you're arguing in good faith.
>To me practical results matter more than getting to feel morally smug.
i don't believe in voting for people unless i want them to have the office. it's not about being morally smug, it's about voting for a candidate i want to win.
>Either way, lots of your responses (not just to me in this thread) are sounding right out of right wing playbooks
pigeonholing
>so I’m gonna say so long since I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith.
your accusation of bad faith is, itself, bad faith. but have a nice day i guess.
We’re not talking “literally” a vote for the major candidate you like least. We’re talking “mathematically” a vote for the major candidate you like least.
Since FPTP voting systems like the US employees do not require any candidate to achieve a majority, FPTP systems eventually decay into two major parties, and voting for a third party after that decay is a vote against your own interests.
Here’s a young CGP Grey explaining it beautifully 12 years ago.
mathematically, the vote goes +1 to the candidate for whom you vote. the rest of this is storytelling.
No shit the +1 goes to the candidate for whom you vote. No one is disputing that. The problem is, the third party candidate will not win.
In a FPTP system that has devolved to two parties, without a major political upheaval bringing about the death of one of the two parties, there are, realistically, only two candidates who have a chance of winning the election.
If you vote for neither of those two candidates, the candidate it benefits the most is the major candidate you agree with the least. This is called the “Spoiler Effect.” This is Nader taking sufficient votes from Gore in 2000 to hand the election to Bush, because Green Party voters would have, given something like the Alternative Vote or Ranked Choice Voting, ended up mostly being Gore votes.
This is Teddy Roosevelt running independent in 1912 and getting Woodrow Wilson, an extremely racist shitbag, elected president by taking Republican voters away from Taft.
And we all understand this effect, because when it looked like Trump might lose the primary in 2016 and was threatening to run anyway, Democrats were thrilled because it would guarantee a Democrat win by splitting the conservative vote.
This “Spoiler Effect” is what is meant when someone says that voting third party is a vote against your own interests in a FPTP system. It’s the major reason FPTP is a terrible voting system.
>This is Nader taking sufficient votes from Gore in 2000 to hand the election to Bush, because Green Party voters would have, given something like the Alternative Vote or Ranked Choice
Voting, ended up mostly being Gore votes.
gore won that election. the supreme court appointed bush.
The Supreme Court wouldn’t have been able to do so had Gore more demonstrably won Florida, which he would’ve done without Nader. That’s the point.
>The Supreme Court wouldn’t have been able to do so had Gore more demonstrably won Florida, which he would’ve done without Nader. That’s the point.
there is no way to prove this.
>This “Spoiler Effect” is what is meant when someone says that voting third party is a vote against your own interests in a FPTP system.
voting for biden or trump is explicitly voting against my interest. my interest is in neither of them having power.
>the third party candidate will not win.
where did you get your crystal ball?
SkyMall, but it’s a bit hazy on predicting the future. My assurance that the third party candidate won’t win instead comes from paying a modicum of attention to US politics and not being disingenuous.
your insinuation of disingenuity is bad faith.
No, it isn't. It's abstaining.
Congrats, you were able to exercise your free will and feel good about it. Hope you enjoy the consequences.
So is setting yourself on fire, and it's an equally bad idea.
self immolation is not voting