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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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politics
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Of course they're appealing—they're scared and desperate to keep people from having any choices beyond the duopoly they cling to so tightly.
Not at all. You'd have to be well detached from reality to think that. Our first past the post voting system ensures there will always be two major parties. Whatever the parties are.
What Republicans understand. Is that it's easier to win. By taking advantage of the ignorance and hyper radicalization of 3rd parties. They can pull at the disparate groups that vote for their opponent. Basically neutralizing them. Making it much more likely for Republicans to win.
Until we switch from first past the post, 3rd parties will continue to be irrelevant.
The irony here is that the very system you’re defending is the one that keeps real change from ever happening. Clinging to first-past-the-post and dismissing third parties only strengthens the stranglehold of the status quo. If the system is so inevitable, why fear those who dare to challenge it?
West is only on the ballot in 12 states. He literally couldn't win if he won every state he was on the ballot and there is no reason to believe that he can win even on estate. This is reality however we react to it. It can only practically at the state level be changed by working within the existing parties to make ranked choice or some alternative system the reality. If you build enough support for that you may in the future have a chance of having third parties that can actually win.
In the meanwhile we have to vote for the only party who can protect Democracy in reality because they are on the ballot in every state and essentially virtually locked in for 226 EC votes. If we do that we get to continue working towards that instead of ending democracy in the next 4 year cycle.
I'm not voting for West, and I didn't write the article, so I don't really have anything to say about your concerns. But I am not voting for Harris or Trump either.
Then you care less about our democracy than I do
That's your opinion, and I respect and support your right to that opinion, even if I disagree with it. And I would hope that you respect and support my rights to my opinion.
Seems a weird thing to say that I care less about democracy than you do just because I am not voting for your candidate.
To me, caring about democracy means fighting for a system where real choices exist, not just the lesser of two evils.
If you’re content with a broken system that forces people to choose between two candidates who don’t represent their values, that’s on you.
But don’t mistake my commitment to socialism and real change as apathy—I’m fighting for a democracy that actually serves the people, not just the wealthy and powerful.
I'm voting, just not for anyone in the duopoly.
You are free to disagree, but to say that I care about it less than you is a very odd thing to say.
Voting third party in the general doesn't create nor even move the needle towards a situation where "real choices" exist outside party primaries.
What happens is that any given third party is more like one major party or the other. Whichever party they are alike if they are popular at all they hurt the party they are like and help the party they are unalike. Thus third parties are always in the current system destructive of their own ends.
Let's imagine a powerful third party that wants not only to abolish slavery but institute universal reparations for slaves, education for their children, housing, punishment for crimes committed by slavers against slaves. Prison for all those who rebelled against the union and so forth. It would be by my reckoning a very justifiable platform.
If it had run at the same time as the Republicans and become popular enough to make a difference one can imagine it splitting the vote and helping the slavers win.
Every third party in America is exactly like that they by construction and design help their enemies not those who would be their allies.
Ranked choice makes this dilemma go away can vote Green Democrat Republican and be assured that the winner will actually reflect the preference of the majority. We cannot obtain this by going third party at the national level we can only obtain it at the state level where elections are actually held.
You argue that voting third party only serves to undermine the party most similar to it, effectively helping the opposition. But this perspective assumes the current system is the only possible framework.
The very act of voting third party is a challenge to this idea, a refusal to accept that our choices must be limited to two parties that both uphold the same capitalist structure.
While ranked-choice voting would definitely take care of some of the issues you mention, the push for third parties is not just about winning elections under the current system—it's about forcing a broader discussion, about demanding that the system itself be questioned and eventually changed.
If we never challenge the status quo, we’ll remain forever trapped in a cycle that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
It's not a perspective its a mathematical reality that literally cannot be fixed by voting third party.
Lets say that the state is 50 50 and you pull 3/4 from A whom you are alike and 1/4 from B. To win the plurality you need to pull about 41% to tip over the point where your score is above B because most of your folks are coming from A. You will have to convince millions of people who have never voted for your party to do so in just this one state. Then you have to basically do it in every state that normally falls for your alike side AND then better than half of swing states.
Run the math in the states that normally fall for the opposite side and its worse. You will need to at that point subvert your entire side AND a substantial part of the opposition.
Get 90% of the needed states and all you did is throw the entire race to the opposing side. You could run the same plays for hundreds of years and never win. There is space for another big party only when it can totally subvert one of the existing players. Even after 20 years of failing to win the popular vote and the humiliation of Trumpism its not even clear that the GOP is headed for the dust bin. Odds are that any challenger at best spends the next several cycles splitting the vote with Trumpistan cementing their position as loser.
In reality ranked choice or other such system at the state level IS your singular and only opportunity for third parties. It's the only bullet in your gun you have literally nothing else
I'm still voting third party.