And if someone votes anything else than blue or red, they’re throwing away their vote right?
As long as the US election system is the way that it is, then yes it is an undisputed fact that voting for third party is the same as throwing your vote away. It is a shitty system and it is in desperate need for a change, but it doesn't make it less true.
It's worse than throwing your vote away. It's a shadow vote for the most popular candidate who is most diametrically opposite from your views, in that it is taking a potential vote away from the most popular candidate who is closer than them. It's letting perfect get in the way of better.
And I'll continue to vote 3rd party. My conscious is clear. The system is broken but I'm not feeding into it. Red and blue teams are burning the US to the ground. Hell the tribalism for the blue team just in this post is insane.
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.
Which is fine by me. I'd rather know I didn't contribute to the mess everyone else is making.
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?
No, i think its just willful ignorance. It helped get Trump elected 😂
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.
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.
Hillary won the popular vote, but trump took the electoral college votes... your vote means fuck all.
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.
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.
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.
What are you talking about, what rep is wanting kids dead?
Are you kidding me? The Republican party as a whole wants LGBTQ+ kids - like both of mine - shoved back in the closet, which means suicide for lots of them, especially trans kids who are denied gender-affirming health care.
Trans kids like my son.
I can't afford to pretend to moral superiority by throwing my vote away on candidates who will never win. I have to vote for the ones who can win and won't be a danger to my kids.
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.
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.
the democrats fund republicans too. clinton bolstered trumps first primary campaign.
i don't want to support the democrats or the republicans. so i'm going to vote green.
it's my understanding that the fines for vote-sellig are $5000 in my state and the same at the federal level. for $20000 i'll vote for your preferred candidate in a swing state.
Shoo. I'm in the middle of an actual interesting conversation, and neither of us need trolls cluttering things up.
You don't understand how the electoral college works.
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.
As long as the US election system is the way that it is, then yes it is an undisputed fact that voting for third party is the same as throwing your vote away. It is a shitty system and it is in desperate need for a change, but it doesn't make it less true.
It's worse than throwing your vote away. It's a shadow vote for the most popular candidate who is most diametrically opposite from your views, in that it is taking a potential vote away from the most popular candidate who is closer than them. It's letting perfect get in the way of better.
And I'll continue to vote 3rd party. My conscious is clear. The system is broken but I'm not feeding into it. Red and blue teams are burning the US to the ground. Hell the tribalism for the blue team just in this post is insane.
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.
Which is fine by me. I'd rather know I didn't contribute to the mess everyone else is making.
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?
No, i think its just willful ignorance. It helped get Trump elected 😂
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.
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.
Hillary won the popular vote, but trump took the electoral college votes... your vote means fuck all.
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.
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.
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.
What are you talking about, what rep is wanting kids dead?
Are you kidding me? The Republican party as a whole wants LGBTQ+ kids - like both of mine - shoved back in the closet, which means suicide for lots of them, especially trans kids who are denied gender-affirming health care.
Trans kids like my son.
I can't afford to pretend to moral superiority by throwing my vote away on candidates who will never win. I have to vote for the ones who can win and won't be a danger to my kids.
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.
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:
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.
the democrats fund republicans too. clinton bolstered trumps first primary campaign.
i don't want to support the democrats or the republicans. so i'm going to vote green.
it's my understanding that the fines for vote-sellig are $5000 in my state and the same at the federal level. for $20000 i'll vote for your preferred candidate in a swing state.
Shoo. I'm in the middle of an actual interesting conversation, and neither of us need trolls cluttering things up.
How far up your ass does your head have to go before you think you start seeing daylight?
You don't understand how the electoral college works.
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.
Non-action is a form of action. You still contribute either way. It's either with or without your consent.
Your conscience, and that's just more proof you're dumb.
O no autocorrect got me... totally makes me an idiot. Keep sucking that blue cock, it's totally been great for everyone.
Sure, autocorrect.