The operative, Jefferson Thomas, might seem like an unlikely ally for Green Party stalwart Jill Stein.
"According to FEC filings, the Synapse Group has worked for Republican Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who ran for the GOP presidential nomination this cycle, as well as GOP candidates for Congress. Synapse has also been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for field and canvassing work by America PAC, the outside spending group started by allies of Musk that has spent millions of dollars this election cycle to boost Trump and oppose Democrats."
With a tip of the keyboard to a certain someone who has blocked me and won't see this (a shame really):
Since many in this community have a habit of resorting to personal attacks when responding to posts recently, I’ll say this: I support and respect everyone’s right to vote for who they want to. Just as I support the ability of anyone to point out to someone the consequences of their actions. ;)
I’m just posting this article that’s already available on a much bigger platform than Lemmy—I didn’t write it, just sharing it for discussion.
For those that don’t understand how the Electoral College + FPTP voting works, voting for her means helping donald become president due to the spoiler effect.
I'd also like to point out something I've heard way too much lately:
maybe democrats should run on some of the policies that are overwhelmingly popular instead so there’s no room on the left for someone to run.
I've heard probably a dozen variations of this statement by now.
The spoiler effect is the result of geometric distance between candidates, not the strength of policy positions. If anybody tells you that the democrats should just do X, unless X is switching the country over to approval/star/rcv, or some other system that is more representative, they don't know what they're talking about.
Here is an example using a randomly generated set of voters and candidates. The first election is just two candidates, the second election is identical, but with an extra 3rd candidate
Total voters: 765
The winner was favorable to 56% of voters
lachlan - 427
emma - 338
Total voters: 765
The winner was favorable to 44% of voters
emma - 338
lachlan - 312
omalley - 115
Any party, any candidate can fall victim to this, no matter how strong or inspirational they are. This is simply the result of everybody voting for the candidate closest to them.
A good electoral system will not have the results changed by an irrelevant candidate. But our current systems are vulnerable to this, and it is disastrous for the state of our country.
Seems kinda dirty that Jill Stein would even consider "doing business" with the GOP. I kinda figured as a third party leader she of all people would put her morals and beliefs above numbers.
I think this is a losing issue for Democrats to be putting effort into.... while third party candidates may be spoilers in our current system the solution is not to try and disenfranchise those parties - it's terrible optics and, if you want to capture green voters there are so much easier tactics.
Considering Democrats did the same thing when Trump was running in 16 because they thought it would be easier for Hilary to win... Maybe they would learn that this kind of crappy gaming is dumb and could be fixed with improved voting systems.