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Everyone else is basically going to give you dogshit answers, here, and I'm not gonna read through the thread to confirm that because I've been in enough of these threads on lemmy to know that it's going to be the most oversimplified and horrible hand-wavy explanations you could've hoped for. I think maybe the collective effort people put into their posts on the internet is dwindling as a result of mass adoption and various social media incentive structures, to the point where even platforms like lemmy are gonna get filled with horrible dogshit and just the worst oldest facebook memes of all time. Don't listen to all those fucking morons, listen to me, I'm the only one effortposting in this removed, because I have psychosis and like to write these out as a way to take notes and review my talking points.
SO, at the lowest level, you have gerrymandering. This applies to things like city council seats within cities, it applies to what gets defined as "inside" and "outside" the city and the county, it applies to districts that elect representatives at the state level, and it even, to a certain degree, applies to the states themselves. Basically, every time the electorate gets subdivided, something you would otherwise think is a good thing, as it lets people be governed more with concerns local to that subdivision, instead, those lines get drawn up most often to favor the party that is currently sitting in that seat. Being that this is instituted at pretty much every level of governance, and that people don't tend to change addresses super often, especially homeowners, this contributes to why most states are not swing states, and why most votes are very predictably "wasted", or, are used by the parties to cancel out other very predictable votes, or are used to further secure and entrench power with more overwhelming margins.
You also have first-past-the-post voting in the vast majority of places, abbreviated as fptp voting, in which you have a single, non-transferable vote. Proponents of this system can basically only defend it on its braindead simplicity, because there's not really any reality in which it accurately represents the interests of the voters. If you think of a voting system as being a way for voters to clearly communicate their preferences, and have those preferences followed, then fptp voting only provides one bit of information: "I want this guy". It doesn't rate candidates in relation to each other, it doesn't tell anyone whether or not you would prefer one candidate over another. So, people get locked in to voting for one candidate which has proved to be consistently popular, and has a good chance of winning so they don't "waste" their vote, which as previously described, is probably already wasted, and so we get locked into a two-party system pretty much everywhere.
Both these systems combine to severely limit the weight of anyone's vote. It effectively means that, outside a couple gerrymandered suburbs, in particular swing states, which can be figured out well in advance of elections, the rest of the votes don't matter. Most votes are just locked in a system where they are effectively being used by the sitting parties to cancel each other out.
Most local races are funded at the local level, meaning they tend to favor older, much more well-off candidates which don't necessarily represent the majority of people's interests. This outsized power can be increased with gerrymandering. Americans also tend to favor sitting candidates over new candidates, both because of FPTP, and also because culturally FPTP has become ingrained, meaning incumbent candidates tend to be able to sit around for as long as they want. Primaries are pretty much unilaterally controlled by the parties that run them, as we have seen in this election, and they are able to pretty effectively select who it is that they want to be elected through the funding and backing of the party, within their territories, which is something that's happening at every level, and not just at the presidential level. So, economics and economic disparity has a great role to play in who is able to run for local positions, on top of obviously having a very clear role at higher levels. Less money can also have a very outsized impact in local, smaller elections, where candidates can court corporate interests and party interests and then bankroll their way into a position pretty much guaranteed. This is why you can pretty much dismiss anyone who's going to suggest that you go and run for local office, as though that's some gotcha. They wouldn't know, because they probably also haven't run for their local offices, but especially at the higher levels, those local offices tend to be controlled by elderly small business owners and a bunch of lawyers. Canvassing and commercials are pretty effective, especially when you can concentrate these on the gerrymandered fraction of the population with values already favorable to institutional powers, which is having an outsized impact.
So, given that your vote is pretty much guaranteed to not matter, is especially guaranteed to not matter at the federal level, and is very especially not going to matter if you live anywhere with any significant population density, lots of people take that as an opportunity to piss their vote away on jill stein or whatever other scammer that's running. Of course, third parties would probably be more effective at the smaller local levels, building up larger and larger bases of support until they are more adequately able to challenge the major parties at the federal level, and even try for federal funding, but we've seen such a level of institutional capture at pretty much every level that it's sort of a fucked game to begin with.
It's so fucked up at every level that I'm not sure I would really fault the parties that are running with like, 2% of the votes, in polling, compared to the fucking massive country-wide institutions that are actually controlling elections and messaging. Those that can even get 2% of the votes are likely to get those votes because they've been donated to by one side, the other, or, much more commonly, both, on top of business interests and foreign powers, who all believe that adding in another spoiler candidate will help their candidate get elected.
To hopefully dissuade some idiotic criticisms before they happen:
Q: Well, then what am I to do!?! If I can't vote on a candidate, and have my vote be effective for that candidate, then what have I done politically? What's the alternative?
A: None of that really contradicts any of what I'm currently saying, it's not a valid counterargument. I've told you the reality of the system, if you have a problem with how your current strategy is not effective in that reality, then take it up with reality, not me. I would probably say that organizations outside of the system, organizations owned by a majority of the people within them, organizations that can wield political power, those would probably be useful. Organizations that can punch above their weight class economically would be most useful. We've seen a recent, very minor rise in unionization and union activity, after decades of downturn as a result of government policies, which has been good, but I am concerned again about many of these unions, and especially the older ones, being subject to institutional capture at the highest levels as a result of ill-thought out internal structures and a desire to "keep out the raffle", from elitism, classism, or racism. If I had thoughts of reformism, then I would aim there, and I would probably also aim to create a lot more interconnections between these smaller unions which are more individually vulnerable. One big union, would be a good idea suited to the moment, and I haven't seen it taken up a lot.
And sure, go out and vote, right, but, don't harbor any illusions about what you're doing when you go out and vote. Focus more on your local candidates and your obscure, idiotic local laws and regulations which are probably going to be explained poorly in some half-baked blogpost or news article, if you're even afforded that dignity rather than just having to read shit straight from the charters and laws themselves. Don't just get invested every 4 years when you get threatened with a new form of fascism by corporate media. If you're falling for that shit, then you're probably running around like a chicken with their head cut off, doing worse than nothing. If you're not willing to put in an hour or two of concentrated reading and research in the right places, then you would be better off, at that point, just ignoring all those anxieties, not voting, and eating jalapeno poppers at chili's or whatever else.
Q: This shit is too long, I can't read it all!
A: Tl;dr GOTO 10