Gonna rig the election by not voting for Trump 10.000.000 times, thus, somehow, giving Biden 10.000.000 votes. Any advice on which states would be best not to vote for a candidate?
Gonna rig the election by not voting for Trump 10.000.000 times, thus, somehow, giving Biden 10.000.000 votes. Any advice on which states would be best not to vote for a candidate?
You’re reintroducing complexity into my simplified example and making very valid points about external factors influencing decisions, but I’d like to hear your argument for how the Spoiler Effect isn’t real.
The comparison with piracy falls flat because one is a personal entertainment with limited effect where inaction merely affect your ability to enjoy the game, the other is a political affair where even inaction can have consequences on others.
The spoiler effect is real in FPTP when voting for a third party instead of your preferred major party. When you include not voting in the model, you’re effectively including the option to not vote as an option on the hypothetical ballot. The problem with this is that it changes how votes are counted, making one of the “candidate”’s votes all count for nothing. It’s now a different system with different properties. So the spoiler effect for that candidate disappears unless you get into counting opportunity costs, but accounting for opportunity cost brings into the realm of just arguing against FPTP, which I agree with.
I think it’s worth mentioning that voting is fundamentally a last resort for when consensus building is too slow or won’t scale to the desired population. I think it’s also worth mentioning that liberal democracy is essentially democracy by and for the bourgeoisie, and was certainly not designed by people who had access to Arrow’s Theorem or anything of the sort. So the mathematical issues of which voting systems are good for which types of consensus are really separate from the social and economic issues of political shells and class war. And all in all, I think FPTP has done wonders for maintaining the two party system in the US, which itself has done wonders for maintaining bourgeois control.
Agreement in all points.
I found another way to sum up my point in the meantime: Not voting means that you let the rest decide, and effectively give your assent to their decision in advance. Spoiler voting may hurt your preferred major party. Hence, voting for that major party is the most reasonable choice within the boundaries of the election.
But outside of it, FPTP and the liberal bourgeoisie should just take a fucking hike.
I’ve always seen it the other way, that casting your vote is giving consent to follow the final decision. Personally, I live in a blue state, I work 2 jobs, I have a sizable family including extended family to take care of, and I don’t get enough time off to go wait for hours at my polling station. So I do mail in voting and leave most of the national races blank because my state also does winner-take-all. I still believe voting locally can help in harm reduction and facilitate organizing. I just don’t think it’s ever going to lead to revolution in the imperial core.
I’m reserving judgement on the working class mass movements happening in the periphery because their electoral components are genuinely backed by those mass movements. Maybe that’s naive of me given the US’s involvement in elections and coups in Latin America, for example, but I need some hope sometimes I guess. And also I’m from the US and don’t feel like I have a right to criticize those movements’ tactics.