politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Hell yeah.
Hell yeah! Celebrate throwing away your vote! Wooo!
The vote is counted. It gets tallied for the candidates it’s marked for.
Yes. And who do you think has a chance to win the election?
Any candidate who gets 270 electoral votes.
Right. And PSL cannot get 270 votes from 18 states. It's literally impossible. You're throwing your vote away.
Do you think winning the electoral college is the only effect that a third party vote has?
Especially for a party like PSL that runs down ticket candidates there’s much more than winning the ec.
The winner wins the election and becomes the President and Vice President. That is what happens, not whatever your fantasy makes up.
Wow, is voter turnout used for anything else?
No. Voter turn out is how many people are voting. What else do did you think it is?
This election, sense you don't seem to understand it somehow, is for the president who will be in charge of our country for at least the next four years. As well as for the office holders downvote.
Not voting for one of the only two people that are able to win is throwing your vote away and giving Trump the edge. Any vote that is not for Harris gives Trump an easier time to win.
If you don't care which person gets elected, then that's fine. But if Trump gets elected and you don't like it, you only have yourself to blame.
Wait how is it throwing my vote away? The ballot is tallied for my preferred party. The ballot doesn’t give trump an edge because it isn’t cast for trump.
By your logic that same third party ballot gives Harris an edge and the two edges combine and cancel out. Or explode. Or something.
How am I to blame for trumps ostensible victory when I don’t vote for him? Are all voters to blame just like me? Are democratic strategists who author Harris’ rightward move to blame? Is Harris herself to blame in the case of a trump victory?
Multiple people have explained all of it to you in this post and others. You are refusing to listen. I'm done with you, I'm sorry but you're either extremely naive or you're willfully being an idiot. Either way you're annoying to talk to.
if you think you have a coherent explanation how third party is throwing ones vote away i'll ilsten.
it seems like most people rely on "your party can't win" and dont engage with how there are effects outside winning involved with american elections. i also get a lot of accusations of helping trump win that break down under the slightest questioning.
Willfully being an idiot, it is then.
So do the simultaneous edges my vote gives both Harris and trump cancel out or explode?
Do you think effects outside of winning a particular race are made up?
Do you think the way to build representation is to work at the grassroots level except for in elections?
Do you think everyone but you doesn't understand how elections work?
No, but I’m beginning to suspect that you don’t.
How do you seriously ignore everyone that's responded to you with facts about how the presidential election works? Do you cover your eyes and not read anything at all or something?
Seriously, how is it possible for you to be as dense and willfully ignorent as you are?
If you think I’m ignoring the facts, lay them out.
If the case is as straightforward and clear as you say it is then you’re a copy-paste away from converting someone away from voting third party.
Actually talk to me about this instead of calling me names.
Now there is the possibility that I’m not seeing a surfeit of replies because someone’s defederated from my instance, but I think in that case they wouldn’t see my comments and be able to reply to them.
Local elections is where most of the current people in power got started. Anyone voting for third party in the presidential race missed the boat.
We desperately need more real third-party participation in politics, but voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen—the US voting system isn’t a business that adapts its products to meet consumer demand.
PSL and De La Cruz are only on the ballot in 18 states for 220 Electoral College votes. They literally cannot win.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_access_in_the_2024_United_States_presidential_election.
Taking votes away from Harris only helps Trump.
No third party has reached those thresholds in years.
2020:
2016:
2012:
2008:
2004:
2000:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_presidential_election
18.91% in '92, 8.4% in '96.
Before that, you have to go back to '68 where a racist 3rd party won 13.5% of the vote, and the South, also had no significance beyond that election.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election.
This does not work in a FPTP system. Every vote you peel off the Democrats just enables the Republicans and sets reform back even farther. The only way telling people to vote 3rd party is helpful is if they were going to vote for the GOP. Peeling votes away from Democrats HURTS the chances of other parties to be viable in the future.
I mean unless you are intentionally being obtuse I feel like you know damn well what people mean when they say “A vote for X is a vote for Trump”. It’s not a coincidence that so many Republican allies and organizations are promoting and pumping up 3rd party candidates to run in various swing states and pull votes away from Harris, this isn’t a new tactic and historically has absolutely changed elections.
A vote not for Harris is one less vote for her too. Not voting for anyone and then waking up getting the person you didn’t want winning should not get a Pikachu face. That single vote won’t matter statistically, but it’s the mindset that if lots of people think the same way, and they do, then it will matter.
It’s okay to vote thinking, ugh, fine…I’ll vote Democrat even though I hate the choices. If everyone thinking that way votes, we’ll have a left wing sweep. That would be a refreshing change of pace…then we can put pressure on those reps who listen to people to make the hard changes that right now always get opposed because of party.
I learned about spoiler candidates in 8th grade civics.
Spoiler about spoilers: spoilers can spoil actively, or passively. It doesn’t really matter after the fact, the point is how their words and existence as a candidate influence the success chances for the 2 leading candidates.
Let’s say Trump has 47% support… his theoretical maximum.
That means “Not Trump” is at 53%.
The problem is “Not Trump” is divided among Harris, Stein, and West. Stein and West draw from the Harris camp, not the Trump camp.
So instead of 47% Trump, 53% Harris, you get 45% Harris, 5% Stein, 3% West, Trump wins.
Do that in a few key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Trump gets a 2nd term, actively making things worse for all those people who voted for Stein and West.
But I know you'll ignore all of the above again just like you did before.
in order to make it easier to track all this, i've got a spoiler block with links to the posts you referenced and my responses to them. it's at the bottom of this post. there's four, two of them were replies made to people other than me and one was a top level comment. the fourth and biggest one is a conversation i'm in, responding to the other person and engaging with what they say in good faith.
so no, i'm not ignoring everyone who's responded to me, and i'm not ignoring you.
in order to keep this from descending into minutae, i've recognized a few broad responses to "i'm voting third party":
"You can't win and winning is all that matters."
"You can't have any effect."
"You're gonna spoil it."
the first is false, the second and third contradict each other and are also false.
If you think there's a broad type of argument against voting third party that i missed, let me know.
since i never got to actually break this one out: if the democrats want my vote, they can adopt the policies i want.
I think people who claim "a vote for x is a vote for trump" are just trying to shame me into voting for their candidate using manipulation and falsehood. they usually don't respond or give up that tack when i say "no, that's not how it works", so i don't know what they actually mean because i never get to really dive into it. feel free to dive into it.
you wrote about spoiler effects using popular vote, but we're talking about the electoral college, so that's pretty moot. seems like its hard to blame candidates losing on the spoiler effect rather than the electoral college being fundamentally undemocratic.
spoiler
Local elections is where most of the current people in power got started. Anyone voting for third party in the presidential race missed the boat. was you replying to someone other than me so i never saw it.We desperately need more real third-party participation in politics, but voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen—the US voting system isn’t a business that adapts its products to meet consumer demand. was a top level comment that i never saw or didn't think was interesting if i did.
Here's everything from "PSL and De La Cruz" all the way to the link about the '68 election. it's split up in several responses in that comment chain, but i think that's that whole section.
I did not ignore anything that user said. they ended up trying to claim that perot had no effect, which is a pretty bad place to paint oneself into.
This does not work in a FPTP system. Every vote you peel off the Democrats just enables the Republicans and sets reform back even farther. The only way telling people to vote 3rd party is helpful is if they were going to vote for the GOP. Peeling votes away from Democrats HURTS the chances of other parties to be viable in the future. was not a reply to me and i never saw it.
I think all the rest is a unique comment by you, but let me know if i missed something.