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And a lot of this comes from not fucking voting. I seriously wonder how things would be if voting was mandatory and everyone was given appropriate time off to do it.
as long as they vote along party lines more than according to what the politicians do, number of votes does not improve this.
Unfortunately, I think it’s exactly the opposite. They don’t have to do anything that people want to vote for them anyway.
Blue Fash on Lemmy:
People on this website are understandably losing their minds because we’ve let this type of politics fester so much that the stakes are genuinely high this election cycle. But the stakes are only so high because we keep attempting the same thing over and over again. At this point, I’m not even advocating for a third party. I just want Democrats to do better instead of being less crappy than the other guys.
In Germany we only vote on Sundays and it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience. We’re still lucky when more than two thirds vote. People are in general are lazy and stupid.
Ryan, that you?
“Super einfach, kaum eine Unannehmlichkeit!”
That would be Australia. We are less extreme than the US but still succumb to fear tactics. We did manage to get marriage equality despite a conservative government so there’s that.
Sorry but mandatory vote solves nothing. You’ll still have a lot of people alienate about politics and now they had to vote and they’ll make their choices like a popularity contest.
mandatory vote solves nothing
It theoretically solves structural disenfranchisement, as a mandate to vote is implicitly a mandate to allow people to vote.
In practice, though? States can still layer on all sorts of Jim Crow shit to screen out the lower classes again.
You can vote for whichever politician you like, so long as it’s AIPAC approved.
Isn’t that how it works in Australia?
That’s because y’all won’t fucking VOTE
I did, and the primary to. Then the people who I voted alongside of talked massive shit about me because I didn’t smile hard enough while voting for “the most pro-labor president”.
Then they didn’t do anything to fix the First Past the Post voting system and the spoiler effect that comes along side it. Despite lecturing people over and over about its mathematical flaws whenever anyone mentioned voting outside the two party system.
I will vote for your blue conservatives, but don’t try to fool me that I am represented with things as they are.
VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE
Municipal, provincial, federal. I don’t fucking know how your country works just fucking vote. Pretty pleaaaaaase.
For what, exactly? The parties choose who we’re allowed to vote for. Until we abolish FPTP and implement RCV, there will be no democracy in America.
They won’t be aligned to your interests unless you vote.
They don’t fear us.
thank you citizens united
for those unaware: https://campaignlegal.org/update/how-does-citizens-united-decision-still-affect-us-2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
Go to 5:40
~stop voting for politicians who don’t align with your values and politics~
can we vote for imaginary politicians now?
what politics do you have? what motivates you?
I like the party for socialism and liberation and it’s a great time to like them because they’re running a presidential candidate on a platform of palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to israel, but you might have different values.
what do you wish you could vote for?
I don’t believe there is a single politician out there who mean more than 2% of what they say.
I definitely lean left in almost any category… the problem is that even if a politician or party directly promise, word for word, exactly what I want. There is zero chance they will even try to implement it when they get to power; worse, there is not even a way to keep them accountable except “not voting for them again”.
I live in Canada and I voted for Trudeau in great part for electoral reform which was directly promised and then completely 180d. Trudeau did a couple of OK things but for the most part has been mediocre (not the cause of all our problems as the opposition claims). However, I find myself now in the spot where I either vote for Trudeau again to keep on the mediocrity train, or vote for PP who stands for nothing, has accomplished nothing in over 20 years of being a public employee leech and has all but promised he will run the country off a cliff to own the libs
i’m not as familiar with canadian politics as i could be, who’s PP?
IIRC you have a communist party and a ml party. idk if they have a decent stance on the issues that motivate you but they’re probably not a fall in line behind the liberals party like americas DSA is…
PP is short for Pierre Poilievre who is the head of the Conservative Party (our version of USA’s Republicans) and likely to win the next election in 2025
The closest we get here is the NDP (New Democratic Party) who are left leaning… but they are in shambles here
Oh man I’d love to, but with the current voting system and the two parties, it’s between a shit sandwich and a shit sandwich with razors in it.
Wow, where do you live that there aren’t any third parties that align with your values or politics?
Third parties really don’t matter. You have one vote which is against the guy who will do his part for Project 2025 (end democracy – and Democrats – and install a one-party autocratic state, who doesn’t even have to pretend to care what you think). And you do that by voting for the other popular guy, the Democrat.
If you vote for a third party or you don’t vote, then you do nothing to stop the rise of autocracy. Obviously, a vote for the Republican is a vote to accelerate the one-party autocracy process. So those are your options.
Third parties only act as spoilers in FPTP elections, and the campaign machines for both major parties regard and will regard them as such.
Ross Perot ran for President as an independent as a third party candidate getting 18% of the vote and none of the EC, and is the record holder for the largest share by a third-party presidential candidate.
It’s wild that you chose Perot as your example when he’s generally accepted as having not been a spoiler and his anti-nafta platform dragged it kicking and screaming into daylight for everyone to see.
If anything, Perot ‘92 was a great example of a non spoiler third party forcing both major parties to actually be held accountable for their policies.
When both parties don’t represent you, vote for one that does!
Okay, if you don’t care which of the two guys gets elected (Democrat or Republican) then sure, vote for the third party of your choice. That said, we don’t know if Perot was a successful spoiler. If Perot pulled (approximately) two GOP voters for every one Democrat, then yes, he was a successful spoiler (the math is even more sophisticates, since this would have to be calculated for each swing state and then summed up) but we don’t know.
But in 2024, every Republican voted into office advances the effort towards turning the US into a one party autocracy. This means you have to vote tactically based on if you want that process sped up, slowed down or don’t care. Unless you’re close enough to a billionaire to get the fuck out of dodge (e.g. leave the US for extended leave) then a Trump presidency is going to lead to a lot of Trumpgrets, and a risky venture through the gravity well of a purge and holocaust.
I can’t speak for you guys, but I don’t want to risk dying in a concentration camp, and I can’t emphasize enough how much that is totally not hyperbole.
We do know if Perot functioned as a spoiler. We know because after hw bush lost a bunch of people threw around the spoiler accusation and that prompted several groups to analyze the results in depth as you said would be necessary over the next decade.
It turns out that Perot did have more pull amongst conservative voters but the electoral college effect was only to reduce Clinton’s margin of victory.
Which sounds crazy unless you grew up in an area that was filled with conservative voters who had no desire to get behind hw bush after he lied about taxes.
Clinton’s success came from being conservative enough to rob pissed republican voters from their party, not from Perot siphoning off hw bush’s base.
Anyway, I’ll leave aside the question of how anyone can suggest that a regime actively supplying and denying a genocide while suppressing protests against it doesn’t count as fascist already and ask: if you really believe that project 2025 represents a move towards one party autocracy, and you remember January 6, what makes you think that Biden being declared the winner is going to stop the fascist state you fear?
If you truly believe that the republicans are as big a threat as you say then it doesn’t matter how people vote, they’ll just attempt a coup better this time. You’d make more sense if you were telling people to arm themselves instead of vote.
The answer is it’s all up in the air.
I expect there’s a massive GOP movement to suppress votes and gerrymander other votes. I suspect there are efforts to defraud the election in some counties or even in some whole states. But I don’t know how successful they will be.
I expect there will be an attempted coup d’etat if Biden wins the election, but I don’t presume it’s going to overthrow the US. We may break out into civil war, but then if the Republican party takes power, the US is going to be really hazardous anyway. I’m no expert, but by my understanding civil war is going to be inevitable so long as we can’t get relief from the mass precarity and enough election reform to empower the public. And since the Democratic party still treats its progressive wing as red-haired stepchildren who have to dine at their own table, we can expect only table scraps.
Biden staying in the White House means I probably have longer before I’m collected to be processed as an undesirable. It could make a difference of months or decades.
That said, I’m pissed off, too, the degree to which the US is responsible for the Palestinian genocide, though the way I’ve been following it, Biden has been doing a lot more than the neo-liberal norm to quietly slow down Netanyahu’s offensive into Gaza. Not as much as I’d like, by far, but more than I’d expect from an establishment Democrat. Biden’s been slow-walking aid to Israel, whereas we expect the Republican party is glad to facilitate massacring Palestinians while simultaneously cutting off support to Ukraine so Russia can take over.
Assuming you are a voter, it’s up to you, and maybe it’s more important to you to symbolically support Palestine by not voting against the Republican party. But doing so might have material effects that make things worse in Gaza, hence I’m going to vote tactically.
The good ol us of a
I like party for socialism and liberation. If they don’t have a candidate listed on your states ballot but they’re running one you can write em in.
What kind of politics do you have? I suggested psl because they’re running on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to weapons shipments to Israel and those issues seem to be what’s disgusting people with the democrats and republicans this go around, but what else motivates you?
you can write em in.
Write in candidates to defeat the two party system and FPTP voting. Brilliant.
every ballot is tallied. if one of the parties wants to pick up votes in your district they look at what people voted for in the past and try to either adopt that platform or clearly tell people they already have that platform.
if, as the OP states, our elected representatives don’t actually represent us, the first step is to say in a way that cannot be denied or covered up what positions they would need to take up in order to represent us.
if one of the parties wants to pick up votes in your district they look at what people voted for in the past and try to either adopt that platform
Maybe, but not the way you think.
If the democratic party gave a fuck about what their party thinks they would have moved further left to scoop up the Bernie supporters. Instead they keep moving right.
I live in a rural area and all options are basically the same. The only real difference is Republicans usually going hard on the maga shit. Policy wise there’s not a ton of difference. Sometimes we’ll get a libertarian.
if you see an option with a write in part, write in someone instead of casting a vote for a candidate you don’t like.
if there’s not an option to write in your choice, don’t fill that part out.
someone else commented and talked about being in a place where everything is pretty much dominated by the republican political machine. in those cases it might be better to focus on mutual aid and working in local county and town meetings instead of attaching yourself to a party.
if you’ve got the time, putting the screws to someone in a county board of commissioners meeting over spending a bunch of money on the local cops riot gear that they never use instead of straightening up peoples screwy culverts is a sure win.
I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Between my job and everything else I have going on I don’t have the free time or mental energy for that level of political activism.
me neither anymore tbh, especially when meetings are scheduled around someone elses time and i gotta take off work or whatever to make em.
if you really feel left out, just don’t vote for people that don’t align with you no matter who else is on the ticket and help out the people around you when you can.
sometimes the best activism we can do is just taking care of each other!
King Log (does nothing) and King Heron (eats all the frogs, id est, the constituency).
This is an old problem.
I live in Oklahoma. Often, I don’t even get to vote for a position, because the only candidate that runs is a Republican.
And having volunteered on several Dem campaigns, that’s because Oklahoman republicans are allowed to terrorize and harass Dems into not running at all.
sometimes i see ballots like that too. if you don’t have an option, but there’s a write in line, write in something, anything. if there’s no write in line and you don’t see a candidate you like, leave that field blank.
some places are already dominated by a party machine. in those cases it might be best to do mutual aid like helping the people around you instead of volunteering for a political party that is unpopular and going to face insane opposition anyway.
I don’t have all the answers for everyone in every case and place.
Duh? We know already know this. Their main concern is staying in office for as long as possible and see how badly they can fuck up the country.
Duh? We know already know this. Their main concern is staying in office for as long as possible and see how
badly they can fuck up the country.much they can grow their own bank accounts.The destruction of the country is just a byproduct of their greed. :(
Shit, y’all could’ve saved a ton of time and effort if you’d have just asked me; I’ve been saying this for years. And it’s only worse when you’re the one speck of blue in a red sea.
It’s one of those things that are obvious to reasonable people but it’s nice to have proof for when you run into unreasonable people who deny it.
i love getting scolded about voting when even if I personally managed to pull off a miracle and convert one thousand people to vote for biden, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.
jUsT VoTE!!1!!11
As if voting for president makes any difference, when it’s the electoral college who makes the final decision. And they’ve proven in the past that they’ll do what they want.
Friendly reminder that Donald Trump LOST the popular vote in 2016 and was illegitimately put into power by the rogue electoral college. His presidency should never have happened.
And this is why Ronald Reagan was right: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” - Not.
Each congressperson represents too many people.
We need to add seats to the House of Representatives.
Quintuple the number of seats in each district, use Sequential Proportional Approval Voting to elect the five members of each district.
Let’s add some seats to the Supreme Court while we’re at it.
We can’t do that or Republicans will never have control of government.
I mean that’s a good thing, and we’ll finally have some semblance of representation, but it’s exactly why we can’t do it. :(
Isn’t there something we as a people are meant to do when the government fails to serve us? 🤔 Asking for a friend.
2nd amendment. 😎
Take a moment to stop focusing on the day-to-day so we can go out and water our trees.
You don’t vote for people who don’t represent you.
Our first past the post voting system is mathematically flawed to always result in a two party system through strategic voting.
People are not free to vote for who best represents them because they would let someone who represents them even less win the election.
While this spoiler effect is inherent in First Past The Post voting, there are other voting systems where there is no spoiler effect.
So here we are, chained in the trunk of the car these two legacy political parties drove off a cliff into a river.
And the Water rises… take a deep breath.
For that first part to work we must vote for better candidates at the lower level and stop voting for the media selected consensus candidate in primaries.
Otherwise we’re just disengaging from the system and letting two people pass the presidency back and forth.
They don’t like it if you tell them that you hope their family dies in a bloody revolution because they are were too cowardly to vote to convict Trump, though.
so i’ve heard
Is this a reference to some news article or did you get to have a chat with the FBI or something? I respect and support your First Amendment rights if it was the latter.
Y’all should check out Doug Ford and the Ontario Science center shit show if you like this type of story.
No one with power will ever pass laws to reduce their power, but a direct democracy work be very posible with modern technology.
Technology, yes. Shitshow? Definitely.
That would be nice in the future. Unfortunately, the modern Web is not even in the ballpark of being secure enough for something like that (and it’s trending worse, not better).
Yeah, it’s not like the public pays particularly well unlike bribery, I mean lobbying groups.
I don’t think people realize how much graft is built into the system.
- Bribery is near impossible to prove. (Thanks SCOTUS)
- You can effectively keep left over campaign funds.
- Insider trading does not apply to you.
- Your paycheck is expected to cover 2 offices, staff at each, 2 homes, frequent travel between them, and your political advisors.
- Fundraising is organized by the party, stay on their good side and you get help and resources to raise money. Introduced to the right people, etc. Get on the wrong side and get cut off.
It’s no wonder our elected representatives treat small donations like mana from heaven, we’re effectively paying them. And they treat the capitol building like a stock trading room because that’s their real retirement fund, their key to independence from the party.
