Situation A you vote for 3rd party
- candidate T gets t votes
- candidate B gets b-1 votes
- candidate 3 gets 1 vote
candidate 3 loses for sure winner is biggest of ‘t’ and ‘b-1’. Which we can rewrite as biggest of ‘t+1’ and ‘b’
Where is my money?!
77It's less a vote for Trump and more a lack of a vote for the party that can realistically defeat him. I wish 3rd parties were a viable federal election option. But they aren't yet to a point where they can realistically win in the US.
So the sentiment that not voting, or voting for a guaranteed loss is a vote for the worse of the two parties with a chance to win isn't entirely without merit, it's just poorly phrased. It means that if you fail to vote for the person that can win over the worse candidate, you have given the worse candidate a better opportunity to win.
36Changing that mindset is how you solve this fucking problem, by creating opinion divisions between the parties. If some cunt doesn't represent your opinions not even half the way, why the fuck would you vote for them?
4I mean to really change whether third parties work in the US we need systemic changes and regulations to the voting structure because getting a populist movement stateside is nigh impossible. The only reason to vote for someone that doesn't represent you halfway is to hopefully prevent the person who doesn't represent you at all from getting in.
2
I wish 3rd parties were a viable federal election option. But they aren't yet to a point where they can realistically win in the US.
Here's the thing: as long as nobody votes 3rd party, that's going to continue to be the case indefinitely. Wishing won't change that.
Where I'm from we actually have a viable alternative to the centre / centre-right duopoly, and we still hear this sort of rhetoric, even when the outcome is nowhere near predetermined to be one of two options like it is for you guys.
The crux is, that voting for harm reduction cements you in a local maximum when there are better potential solutions out there.
Now I'm not saying that justifies voting 3rd party. There are a lot of unknowns. If more and more people started voting 3rd party, how long would it feasibly take to enact change? 2 election cycles? 4? 10? Does it ever even happen? And if so, is the harm caused in that period justified by the outcome? I'm dubious of that proposition.
Regardless, I think the rhetoric about this issue from both the pro and anti-3rd-partyists tends to be a overly reductive and/or myopic. I think both sides have valid concerns, and the answer isn't as straightforward as it seems.
That said, pragmatically, it sucks, but I feel like I do have to discourage voting for a 3rd party.
3This part of your post is interesting to me
If more and more people started voting 3rd party, how long would it feasibly take to enact change? 2 election cycles? 4? 10? Does it ever even happen?
Mathematically as long as the system is first-past-the-post, it always tends towards 2 major parties. Let’s say we could solve the prisoners dilemma we find ourselves caught in, it’s interesting sometimes to consider what the results of outlier scenarios would be.
So let’s imagine a world in which you could convince voters to embrace 3rd parties. Pew Research has some voter statistics that are useful https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/
Only 37% of Americans reliably voted in the last 3 elections with a roughly even split between the two major parties. So let’s use 40% with an even split to make the numbers more convenient.
So we have an America where 20% of eligible voters vote for the Democratic Party, 20% vote for the Republican Party, and 60% stay home. Let’s imagine a best case scenario for 3rd party voting where a quarter of the democrats, a quarter of the republicans, and an additional 10% of the population that would sit it out are activated by the new choices these parties represent. This america now looks like. 15% reliably vote for democrats, 15% reliably vote for republicans, 20% are willing to vote for a 3rd party and now only 50% sit out.
Because it’s first past the post voting, there are many ways that the 20% can split amongst multiple parties such that the incumbent major parties still win the plurality. It actually doesn’t take much, 2 third parties splitting as unevenly as 14% of the population and 6% of the population ends up still letting the majority party with 15% of the population win. So we come to find that even with a larger population of possible voters than the 2 major parties, they still have to work together quite a bit to win.
Now let’s further imagine that the third parties are able to hold together they form a new independent party that get at least 16% of the population to vote for them and beat the incumbent majority parties.
Have we freed ourselves from being dominated by 2 parties? No, we just switched who does the dominating. The voters in the democratic and Republican parties will see which way the wind is blowing and shuffle around until there are two parties competing again, because in fptp there is a serious penalty to spoiler votes.
Now maybe it would be worthwhile just to put new people in charge. But the most likely outcome is whoever you elect ends up bowing to the same pressures that make the current 2 parties such trash fires and the donors that wrote checks with elephants or donkeys on them to have their way will be just as capable of writing out those donations to a bullmouse.
I’m all for electoral reform and reform in the government. But make no mistake, people posting on Lemmy that you shouldn’t vote because both options suck aren’t doing it out of a serious concern about legitimizing the process. The process is flawed but there’s no outcome of the election where they go “brave patriots all over this nation sat at home and so it doesn’t count.”
Real reform would require sustained and substantial action from the populace and even if you were to prefer that method of action, it would obviously still be advantageous to vote for the candidate that you think would create policies and laws under which that grassroots action would have the highest probability of success.
6We would really need changes to how voting is done on a regulation level to see the viability of federal 3rd parties. Some States do ranked choice which has really boosted 3rd party viability. I'd like to see that or something similar to it on a federal level.
4
Oh good, another conservative reveals themself so I can block them.
26"A vote for 3rd party is a vote for Trump" is shorthand for "A vote for 3rd party instead of Biden is a vote for Trump".
All it means is "If you don't vote for Biden, Trump is more likely to win", which is a trivial statement.If you were never gonna vote for Biden or Trump anyway, it doesn't matter what you do or don't do with your vote.
But by casting a valid vote, you're still legitimizing the current election system.
Unfortunately, there's no way to vote against the current system, since abstaining will be interpreted as not caring about politics and casting an invalid vote will be interpreted as being to dumb to vote correctly.23I think the issue is that constantly virtue signaling about it online has the risk of swaying other voters or making other voters check out completely
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So this doesn't work as a simple math equation because you have to understand a lot of key concepts first. This has basically nothing to do with the electoral college system so we will put that aside and start with the "first past the post" system of determining elections.
On it's face the First Past the Post (FPP) seems fair. Highest percentage of votes for a candidate wins. But imagine a system where we have a lot of parties. Say there are five- The red, blue, yellow, green and purple parties. So you have an election and maybe the spread looks like this :
- RED 20%
- PURPLE 25%
- BLUE 15%
- YELLOW 10%
- GREEN 30%
So Green takes the election... However this doesn't actually represent the will of a majority as only 30% actually voted for green. So in our little Rainbow country, as generally happens the encumbant party makes mistakes or compromises and becomes less popular. So next time the election comes around you get some party consolidation. Blue maybe has enough ideological cross over with purple to merge into a new party. Yellow is say kind of an extreme outlier and Red and Green are close on the political spectrum but they really believe they got this. Let's say maybe some of the compromises in the new Blue/Purple merger turns off some of their base and Red snags some of their vote share this time.
The new spread looks like this
- RED 25%
- BLUE/PURPLE 32%
- YELLOW 15%
- GREEN 28%
So the problem remains. Only around 1/3 of voters actually chose the "majority" who takes all.
So next election let's say Green, seeking to snag votes does the same thing Blue and Purple did. They change their platform to be more like Red to court the votes of Red party people. The problem being is they are too similar. The next election happens and they end up tying with red because the two parties split the votes but that razor thin line of preference between the parties splits the share. This is called a spoiler. If RED and GREEN are decently acceptable policy wise to the voting pools of both voters then you have a group of 52% that represents what a majority desires policy wise...but that 32% Purple/Blue party is still in control.
So over time Red and Green merge. They win an election. Blue/Purple changes their policies and the two start trading back and forth. Yellow eventually dissolves from never winning and you end up with a two party system. Almost all FFP systems devolve into two party systems through histories that look like this.
Now say we end up in the situation we are in now. The two parties over time sort of naturally drift further and further apart as a branding initiative deepens.
Now imagine one has sown incredible brand loyalty. They are marketing experts, they have been hammering everyone's fear buttons for so long that they could run the literal devil and the party would still vote for them because to do otherwise is heresy.
On the other side you have what could be best described as the lesser of two evils. They don't have to be paragons, their entire strategy has been to be good enough while maintaining a status quo that benefits people like them but they treading water. They aren't fixing anything just adding time to the clock. Not great but probably also not going to sink the ship.
The two go head to head.
Under normal circumstances the voting share between them is pretty evenly split. But it will be a frozen day in hell before those carefully indoctrinated into the marketing strategy of the Right wing will vote differently. If they did they would have to admit they were wrong and well... Everything that's been piped to them for years has painted the other side as decadent, subhumans who are "UnAmerican".
The lesser evil has basically just run on being the lesser evil. Nobody was excited about voting them in last time...
So the votes happen.
- 38% Democrat
- 40 % Republican And the remaining 22% split between a series of independants.
If 3% of that 22% those people thought Trump was the greater evil but didn't vote for the lesser evil then their abstention to participate in voting for a lesser evil , or even just not voting at all basically enables the Republican win. It's not a vote for vote pledge to support Trump, it's a more complicated series of value judgements. A FFP system over times demands gaming of the system. That's why many places have ditched FFP and has these more complicated multiple voting systems to make governance more representive of the actual will of the people to stop this from happening.
America is stuck until that kind of reform happens.
23Dems say they're the "good pro democracy guys" but they love rewriting reality and demonizing others just as much as Republicans.
I don't think I've seen a single dem so far call a third party vote a third party vote unless they're saying "A third party vote is a vote for Trump." Otherwise, they ONLY use the terms protest vote or spoiler vote. Whatever they do, they CAN'T let people know it's possible to vote for what you believe in instead of doing what you're told. So, they have to control the narrative so people believe 3rd party voters just hate America instead of being the only ones not voting for people actively trying to engage in genocide.
Same with how they pay the "right" lip service for 5 seconds then dedicate their day to pissing on leftists, then blaming leftists when they lose.
Democrats are just as fascist as Republicans.
7Here is the nuance that is missing:
First-past-the-post voting systems inevitably trend to two-party systems over time. We see it play out in election models and we see it play out in real life.
One reason this happens is because, in this sort of system, voting for a third party candidate that aligns more closely with your views rather than the best choice of the major party candidates statistically increases the likelihood that the candidate furthest from your views will win. A significant, sustained third party that is more to your liking than the Democratic Party would ensure easy GOP victories for as long as all three parties ran their own candidates, even if the GOP never won an actual majority of votes. (We saw Bill Clinton win both elections in the 90s with much less than 50% and no candidate getting 50% due to a major third party candidate).
Another reason is that even if societal circumstances lead to a third party doing well enough to win it all, what you would end up with is having one of the existing major parties collapse, you’d be back to two parties, and the new third party would become watered down into ultimately the same thing it replaced. We’ve also seen this in American history.
In summary, there is tremendous systemic pressure that causes the two-party system. It’s not that our politicians are tricking us and politicians in Europe under different election systems can’t or won’t do the same. If we changed our voting system to e.g. Ranked Choice, not only would third parties be possible, they would be inevitable. But if we don’t change the system, then voting third party is like forcing two strong magnets together that are trying to repel. Even if you’re able to do it briefly, it’s completely unstable and will correct itself as soon as possible.
The oversimplified version of all this is “voting third party is voting for Trump”. I can see why it’s frustrating because it’s not literally true — however, anyone who is interested in maximizing their best interests, i.e. by having the winner be someone as good as possible, is statistically increasing the chances of the worst candidate winning by voting third party over preferred major party, while our voting system remains in place.
So ultimately, a slight rephrase to “voting third party instead of Democrat helps Trump win” is true.
9You can excuse your "yeah Biden does it but Trump will do it worse" narrative all you want, the truth is that if somebody can't vote for what they believe in because your "only choice is blue no matter who" your "democracy and even the illusion of choice is already dead - and I still won't be voting for Blue MAGA.
Thank you for your prime example thereof though, in using such a bloated write up - not to decry a broken system that needs to be dismantled and reworked to include more than far right and mid right "parties", of course, but to blame Trump on anybody left of genocide Joe who won't vote for genocide regardless of whose doing it.
Blue MAGA.
1First-past-the-post voting systems inevitably trend to two-party systems over time. We see it play out in election models and we see it play out in real life.
this claim is not falsifiable. it's a tautology with no genuine predictive power. it's not science, it is storytelling.
everything you said after this was also wrong
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Tell me in the correct scientific terms why the two Party system in america is a democracy
6It has one party more to choose from than North Korea, therefore democracy.
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Math is hard apparently.
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