- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
"How has Stein fared as a leader? By AOC’s perfectly reasonable standard, she’s done abysmally. As of July 2024, a mere 143 officeholders in the United States are affiliated with the Green Party. None of them are in statewide or federal offices. In fact, no Green Party candidate has ever won federal office. And Stein’s reign has been a period of indisputable decline, during which time the party’s membership—which peaked in 2004 at 319,000 registered members—has fallen to 234,000 today.
This meager coalition can’t possibly kick-start a legitimate political movement, capable of organizing voters and advancing ideas outside of perennial electoral events. It’s just large enough, however, to spoil the work of those who put in this kind of work."
The communist party of the United States has consistently refused to run candidates for major offices very specifically to avoid spoiling the vote.
The Communist Party, yes. The air-quote Communists on Lemmy are just as happy to tell you to vote third party as anyone else.
Oh yeah the kind who will do anything so long as it won’t help
I am a leftist and I celebrate everyone’s right to vote how they please. If people would like to hear my reasons for voting for Kamala, or my concerns about third party spoiling, I can tell them. But a person’s right to vote is more important to me than how they vote. That’s what democracy and being for the people is about. Use your rights, I support that. We all deserve to use our rights.
I’m not sure you could be more milquetoast if you tried. Sure, it’s important that everyone has the right to vote. It is equally as important that everyone understand that unless they vote one of two ways, their vote is essentially going to waste at best, and going against their best interests at worse. A vote for a third party candidate is a vote cast against your closest aligned Democrat or Republican candidate. A vote not cast for them is cast against them. That’s just the way the system works. It sucks. I hate it. I want to change it, but wishful thinking isn’t fixing the problem, and until its fixed, voting third party is a net loss for the voter. That’s the shitty reality of it. People that tell you to vote third party are either idiots, or malicious, and no one should be listening to either of those groups when it comes to voting for the future of the country. Work on changing the system first, then cast the vote you want to cast.
It’s not “equally important.” No, the right to vote is more important. Period.
Sure, your perspective and how you and many others view this election, is that it’s important to vote for either Kamala or Trump. But that’s your perspective. Totally fine to discuss but it doesn’t supercede the literal civil right to vote. Or to run for office.
Today and yesterday, I’ve seen people advocate for removing the right to vote and run for office here on Lemmy. I’ve seen people use the word “disenfranchised” wrong. Our civil rights are actively in jeopardy - see: abortion access. People being confused on how important voting rights are and what that means is BAD. I have seen a LOT of fascist rhetoric lately. It is NOT leftwing or radical or progressive to be fascist and deny people their vote just because you dislike it. It is NOT leftwing or radical or progressive to deny people the right to run for office because it makes another party’s job harder. That is actually literally fascism. What the fuck.
And again, I’m voting for Kamala. I generally agree with your reasoning. I do not agree with the messaging or the idea that people should be forced into thinking and voting like me.
By that logic, the right to own a gun supersedes the need to be educated on how they work. “Here’s a loaded 9mm, Timmy. I’m sure you can figure the rest out.”
And I’m not saying that anyone should be forced to vote any one way. Vote however you want, but being educated on how it works is just as important as the act itself. If every voter were educated on the system and understood how it worked, then we wouldn’t have third party candidates. Actually, strike that, we would have them. We wouldn’t have this first past the post bullshit we do now, and third party candidates would have a chance at being elected if they represent the will of the majority.
Untl we have that, though, people should understand that voting doesn’t work how they want it to, it works how it works. If you want to feed your family by fishing with cheetos, go for it, but don’t tell everyone else that if we all fish with cheetos suddenly fish will take the bait. The nature of the beast is that we vote in a two party system, and we will until we change it at a fundamental level. The fact that we have people saying that third party voting is a viable option tells me that there is a lot of misinformation and a strong lack of education in our voting populace.
A gun is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the right to vote. It is fundamentally unique and vitally important.
People who are voting third party are at least voting. The majority of Americans don’t or can’t vote - that is a bigger concern than HOW someone votes, and is much more manageable with education and neutral conversations. Stacy Abrams did particularly well in Georgia a few years ago because she just got people to vote at all. Any political interest should be encouraged because we all have to start somewhere. As people vote and learn more, they will develop their own opinions about third party spoilers. They will have conversations about it with people like you and they might end up changing their mind. That’s the beauty of being an individual and choice - we can pick to do different things.
As far as misinformation- that’s a huge topic and would require we regulate advertising and media. Collectively though, people do really well and tend to get most answers right. We do better as a group. So the more votes we can get (including allowing felons to vote), the better and more just society will be.
We are talking about rights. I was using gun rights as an example, because like guns, if you don’t know how to vote, you’ll end up hurting yourself or others. Education is key. Everyone has the right to vote, but the ability to cast that vote should come with a caveat. You should know how to vote, and how your vote works. Ignoring the system and willfully playing dumb means that I don’t want your vote to count alongside mine. I’m not saying that people should be educated to vote like me, but that there is a baseline level of education that should be a requirement to vote. And before you get your undies twisted, I’m not saying that we should take away the right to vote from the uneducated. I’m saying we should put more focus into education.
As you told me I was off topic with guns, I’ll say you are off topic here. We aren’t talking about non-voters. We are talking about voting 3rd party.
No, it doesn’t. That’s the lazy answer. That’s the defeatist answer. It requires, say it with me, education. We have such a shit education system in this country that if we had to teach children how to breathe, the infant mortality rate would be at pre-industrial levels. We keep funelling money into special interests, corporate control, and foriegn wars that we have left several generations behind when it comes to education. If we focused on ensuring the education of our children, a lot of our issues would be solved within 50 years. It is the single greatest failing of this once-great country. “Why educate, when we can tell them how to act and outsource critical thinking?”
That is what I’m saying. I’m not trying to take away anyone’s rights. I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do. I’m saying that if we invested in our youth the way we invest in war, we’d be waving to cancer in the rear view mirror of our generational ship bound for Alpha Centauri. Instead I have a bunch of rich cunts with more money than god spending my life measuring their dicks.
A gun is not the same as a vote. Your analogy is not a good one and doesn’t work because voting is a unique right.
This is fascism. This is where we disagree. I am not the thought police for others. I am simply my own advocate and that’s it. Others can agree or not.
I agree that education needs reform and that we have a misinformation issue.
I’m with you there - say THOSE things then. Advocate foe policy that increases education. Do not say stuff like “basic education should be a requirement for voting,” because that’s indeed saying you want to take away rights and tell people what to do.
Yea… though President Debs would have been excellent.