this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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… your vote has power… inaction allows, or using your vote in a way that will never change an outcome is complicity
I mean the quote is kind of the driving aspect of my point. The quote is a commonly quoted WWII quote, it mentions we should speak up and act when necessary. I consider voting third party to be this, or if it isn't, it's still better than voting for someone based on their victory chances because that makes us fall into another WWII cliché, the one where we're just "following orders" (and because it's more of an effort than not showing up to the polls, it's better than not trying).
i’m not talking about doing nothing, but point your effort where it can make change… voting 3rd party is a hopelessly ineffective way of making change… it’s a dream, and that’s it. it makes you feel good, and that’s it, but it’ll never EVER change anything… that is just the mathematics and sociology of how the voting system works
work towards changing from first past the post and removing the electoral college (there are effects to do both of these things that ARE making progress! some of them are even close!)
only THEN can you vote 3rd party and not have it a complete waste
but in the meantime, i beg you, vote for the party that isn’t actively campaigning to persecute minorities, who gave you at least a half way form of socialised healthcare, who’s at least trying with green energy, whose policies and positions are at least internally consistent for the most part
and most importantly, vote for the party that isn’t trying to make it harder to vote for anyone else, because you can be sure that gerrymandering, fucking with the supreme court, playing bullshit political games with voter ID all makes it harder to vote in a 3rd party candidate too
Change is what people make of it, is it not?
change has nothing to do with people until it does… change is just change. change when it comes to people and social systems is effective only when it effects the majority of people that are touched by an issue. voting 3rd party after not for some time is change of a kind, but i wouldn’t call it social change
social change comes when a large number of people decide something should be different, and the mathematics and sociology behind first past the post means that it’d take something so close to impossible that it’s not worth classing in the realms of possibility for a 3rd party to have any effect on the political system
the reality of the system is that the US is a 2 party system… the statistics of FPTP, and the game theory that leads to defensive voting, spoiler effect, and any number of other bad outcomes ensures that
within such a system, you just can’t hope to have an outcome other than 1 of the 2 parties having any real impact, thus you have to change 1 of the parties to be the way you want it to be, or you must change the system
you could argue that voting 3rd party forces the parties to change their positions, but historically that hasn’t really happened so i personally wouldn’t hold my breath
vote defensively, and work to change the system… because changing the system is incremental, achievable, and less subject to the whims of a few
You say that like there haven't been third parties coming into power before. For example, the Whig party used to be one of America's two parties before it was replaced. Or to use a more severe example, when Hitler became a Nazi, the party had six people in it, and we all know what happened next. Social change is also defined by the action, not the actors.