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A tweet from the George Takei Twitter account which states:
"A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. It was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights.
It would have been understandable if people like me said they’d never vote for a Democrat again, given what had been done to us.
But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has betrayed its values.
I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again.
Bill Clinton broke my heart when he signed DOMA into law. It was a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community. And I knew that we still had much work to do. But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it, not to check out by not voting out of anger or protest.
There is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make 100 percent of the time. Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too."
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The last paragraph I find particularly powerful and something more people really should take into account.
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Why would he? The US voting system makes third party candidates an impossibility. It’s not a viable option.
To elaborate a little further: Our First Past the Post system makes third party candidates a spoiler candidate for the party they most closely resemble
Say you’ve got 3 people running for a position. Person A and Person B are fairly similar but differ in some key points, Person C is the exact opposite of Person A.
The election happens and this is the result: Person A gets 30%, Person B gets 30%, and Person C gets 40%. Person C wins, even though 60% of people didn’t want Person C.
This is why third party candidates are usually considered “spoiler candidates”
Where fourth party?
Down the street, at the house with the big tree. Look for the large number of cars and the thumping music.
Can’t miss it.
I think that logic is employing the “best of two evils” ideology again. People should vote on the person that better represents them and person C is the one that represents most people. Voting against people they dislike is not the basis of democracy!
No, it’s a well fleshed out theorem and is mathematically correct
That’s because FPTP is a terrible voting system. Tactical voting is the only realistic solution a voter has to the FPTP problem.
Person C had 60% of people vote against them, they didn’t represent most people.
Unfortunately in our first past the post system it doesn’t matter how many people vote for other candidates, if you get the most you win.
Here’s a fun little history fact for you: back in 1860 there were 4 parties on the ballot for the presidential election. The winner got 39% of the votes. Link
I understand that. What baffles me is how willing he is to accept the FPTP system they have in the US, especially with his history. Given the beginning of his tweet, you’d think he’d conclude with an appeal to reform the system, to make it viable to vote for third parties. Instead, he acts as if the system was a constant of the universe, not a man made one that can quite easily be changed. He lays down the perfect argument for a reform of the system, without actually speaking out in favor of it. Thats whats wild to me.
And who should be the one to actually do the reforming? Everyone always asks for reform in the system but no one actually wants any specific entity to do it.
The people doing the reforming would need to be the people with the power to change the system in those ways. I’m not familiar enough with the system in the US to know whether that is the president, the supreme court, congress, or some other entity, but someone has the power to do that I’m quite certain.
To get them to do this, the people would need to pressure them into it, be it with their vote, petitions, demonstrations, social media posts or whatnot. There are many ways to achieve change, but it won’t happen as long as people just keep voting for the lesser evil, because “eh, what can you do”
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Well, sorta but also not really.
Neither party seems to have any interest in reforming the voting system to something more representative. So in that way I guess you could say they are colluding, but more reasonably they simply share a common incentive.
But it really is the system itself that makes third party candidates basically impossible. It incentivises people to vote strategically, not for the party they want but rather against the party they don’t want. That system is eventually sure to collapse into a two-party system.
That’s because unless they get rid of the first-past-the-post system, it’s 100% wasted.
Unfortunately, FPTP also keeps the existing dominant parties complacent in only having one enemy, so they don’t actually have to try very hard. So changing it is unlikely to gather a lot of steam, either. “Lesser evil” sucks, but is ironically a lesser evil than just throwing away the vote entirely.
I disagree with this mindset.
In a purely hypothetical scenario say 10% of people vote for the third party candidate, and this candidate has policies which neither of the two main parties have, say more green policies. When the results come in and one of the main parties lose by 5%, they’re going to start thinking about adopting a few more green policies to capture some of that third party vote for the next election.
Voting third party can absolutely change the policies of the main parties, it happened in the UK with UKIP - a party which had less than 10% of the vote and no chance of a majority, but it spooked the big parties enough that they promised a referendum on EU membership.
Sadly this doesn’t work if one of the parties is threatening to do all they can to break down the democracy before you get your chance to see the results at the next vote.
Disagree as much as you want, that certainly still seems to be how shit works. If I’m wrong - awesome! Show me how.
Bernie Sanders was the best-positioned potential third party candidate in probably the last 50-100 years. Why, then, didn’t Bernie run as a third party candidate? Because it’s not a viable strategy in the FPTP way we run elections here. He knew that it would be the worst option.
There isn’t a viable “other way”.
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To make it true? That would be the federalists and the democratic republicans. To keep it true? Well that would be the winner-takes-all system the US has. Blaming a single entity for systematic issues will never work the way you want it to.
If the democratic party died tomorrow, a new party would take its place and it would be just as terrible as you believe the DNC is now.
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I live in a state that has reliably , by a wide margin, given all of its electoral votes to the same party for over 40 years. Voting third party and helping them get 20% of the popular vote so they have a spot in the debates next election is literally the only way for my vote to matter.
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I live in Connecticut you idiot, all of our electoral votes are going to the democrat even if I voted for trump directly. It’s amazing that you people have such strong opinions on the electoral system yet know next to nothing about it.
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I don’t expect you to know where I live. I do expect you to know that this ‘every vote matters, a vote for anyone but Biden is automatically a vote for Trump’ rhetoric really only applies to like 6 or 7 swing states.
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I don’t really care how much rnc/dnc Kool aid you guzzle but don’t try to pour it down my throat
There aren’t any third party Presidential candidates in America who deserve 20% of the popular vote. None of them put any effort into winning congressional seats or pushing alternative voting to make themselves viable. They’re just a bunch of grifters and fools who only show up every four years to beg for donations instead of doing anything useful to fix our political system.
Do you believe there are any major party presidential candidates who deserve my vote?
If you’re not with us you’re with the terrorists.
He does. A “protest vote” is the same thing as throwing away your vote for a third party in the general election for president.
He doesn’t mention protest votes though, only not voting out of protest, which is something entirely different imo. Not voting can be interpreted as satisfaction with the status quo, while a protest vote is the opposite, a clear statement of rejection of all available choices. Not voting is quiet approval, a protest vote an active display of discontent.
Also, I disagree that a vote for a third party is a protest vote. I usually vote for a fringe party, but I’m not doing so to protest the system or ruling parties, but simply because I think they are the best candidates.
Finally I don’t agree with the idea that I am throwing away my vote by voting for an unpopular candidate. If anything, I am doing the opposite, I am making my will known. The people who decide that this vote has no worth are the ones throwing away my vote and they are the ones undermining democracy.
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Fucking idiot.
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Then who is? George isn’t.
Go.
Away.