Great deduction skills there.
Sure, you can't literally steal a vote, but either you're unfamiliar with American colloquialisms or being deliberately obtuse. It's a term that describes exactly what you're doing here - actively trying to convince people to vote against something using deception.
Yes, you're being deceptive by trying to drive democratic voters to split their vote so the right wins. I have yet to see you make a single good faith argument here.
You need 270 Electoral College votes to prevent the vote going to the states for the Presidency. There are 538 votes available. The only way to have more than two parties compete and have the election not go to the House is if one party is unified and has large public support against the other parties that do not. This essentially creates a single-party state.
Ergo, our system is designed to have two parties, each with roughly half the population behind them. Anything more mathematically ends in a single party state.
In general I agree that voting can be used to hold candidates accountable for their policies. In this case, I still don't see how holding the less terrible of the two accountable isn't tantamount to helping the worse. No one knows why you voted 3rd party, just that you did. If the outcome is that Repubs win, the simplest answer is that most people prefer hard right policies, which is opposite the goals of most 3rd parties (except perhaps libertarianism).
Less terrible of the two is something I think most people would follow unless indoctrinated to think the more viable option is worse. Having constant conversations about holding democrats accountable with nary a peep about how Repubs are worse leans into this viewpoint. At best it's bad optics. At worst it's intentional to secure a far right win.
The one valid reason not to vote Dem/Repub this cycle has been to not support genocide, which ultimately supports genocide except the voter can dissociate their vote from the outcome. Other than that, I haven't seen any other valid arguments to vote 3rd party, particularly when looking at what those candidates would do if they won. Holding the presidency with all of Congress against you means you can't get anything done, so it's a waste of 4 years.
The argument of bad faith you've made sounds awfully like the beginning of a slippery slope argument.
"Mary hat hey lid tell lam, ids fleas woes white has know"
Oh that's way down by Terre Haute. Makes slightly more sense but still baffles me that someone can simultaneously be proud of being in a union while supporting the guy that wants to dismantle them.
That's Indiana for you. NWI is littered with that and some of the people I work with are in a union and parrot Fox News. Wildest shit I've ever seen.
If only you could put that same effort into looking at the GOP. This post is disingenuous as fuck.
Whoa you think that reply was someone being mad? Oh boy you're in for some disappointment as I chuckled, wrote my response and went on with my day.
"And maybe they should do it RIGHT NOW, and maybe I'll vote then but it'll still be for not Dems, and maybe they should also stop genocide, and maybe maybe maybe. .."
Did I capture your full wishlist there? Anything else you'd like now without regard for how long it takes?
Don't come to Lemmy for math proofs, particularly in a political conversation. What an obtuse statement.