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this sounds very utilitarian. you known who else was utilitarian? thanos!
This one's much simpler than that; one party will throw people I love into a concentration camp in the next four years, one party will not. I will vote for those who will not. The rest is just bullshit.
You sound like one of those dangerous shitlibs, not wanting people to be thrown into concentration camps. Don't you know that the lives of the likes of you and me are acceptable sacrifices so that the wannabe revolutionaries can (checks notes) do nothing but feel really smug about how superior they are to The Establishment?
There's a part of me that thinks these people fell for very well crafted propaganda that kept them away from the voting booth and, like Magats, they keep doubling down instead of admitting they got duped and moving on.
In a binary system where my choices are Nazis or not Nazis, anyone who comes along and tells me not voting is the best option is my fucking enemy.
If you don’t have ranked choice voting you do not live in a democracy
Not necessary in actual democracies where you have 10+ different parties.
There, abstaining is just an other party. One with a powerful voice telling the politicians that if enough people not vote, it is a big sign that something is wrong with the system and things will need to change to prevent riots.
It is not the same as voting blank, which is also possible. Then your vote gets added to the most popular vote. In a way of saying that you are content with any.
That's BS. Removing yourself just removes yourself, nothing more. 70% of the population not voting just means 16% get to decide - there's no redo.
After all, you not voting because you didn't like the options is indistinguishable from you not voting because you didn't care.
In order to protest you need to participate in the process. Even invalidating your ballot is a stronger sign than not voting.
I live in Switzerland where low voter turnout is common, yet the population prides itself for its direct democracy. This discussion comes up every election cycle and it's always the same. Nothing happens because of low turnout and nobody thinks twice about why.
Here, voting blank is the same as not voting, btw. It's the way to correctly Not Care in cantons that mandate voting.
here it's reversed. blank votes are counted separately, meaning that you want to participate but no option is good. abstaining means you don't care.
I feel like even a protest party would be a louder statement than abstaining, but yes, this is most applicable to ultra-fucked two-party FPTP systems.
Calling it harm reduction is thinly veiled 'both sides same" nonsense / "n n not enough". Dems deliver when they get a majority in all 3 houses. Want more? Then give them more majorities.
Harm reduction is highlighting that both sides are not the same. Fuck's sake.
It's basically saying one side harms, the other side harms less. Aka both sides harm. Aka both sides same. I see it as "both sides same" lite.
People got called out on "both sides same" so they switched the term to "harm reduction" to slip in the notion that both sides harm.
Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No? Shut the fuck up and stop blaming voters because the Democrats don't know how to do politics on purpose so they don't lose their bribes.
Want a better analogy? There's a bus driving for a cliff and one group votes to minimize the impact of driving off the cliff while another group says please please drive faster off the cliff and do a backflip. A third group says guys, can we perhaps maybe not drive off the cliffd? And the rest call them insane and drive off the cliff
Its more like 9 people on a bus, 3 vote to drive off a cliff, 2 vote for a break to get ice ream and then continue driving towards the edge of the cliff after, 2 scream why the fuck are we continuing to drive towards the edge of the cliff, the other two believe things will just be the same regardless if they vote or not. Meanwhile the people who want other people to vote for a pitstop on the way to impending doom and death are complaining that the people with the most realistic assessment of the situation are being unreasonable, unrealistic and and/ or unwilling to compromise and if we are going to die anyway we might as well have some icecream (delay the inevitable and hope we can fix things before we get to the edge of the cliff but at this rate it looks like it’ll only get worse because one side turns the mechanism as far as they can get away with and the other ratchets back into a convenient position for the other side to turn the mechanism to their advantage again) this is the more accurate assessment and it’s because education standards were destroyed and the ego’s of people who are too gullible for their own good and don't understand the scope of the corporate apparatus/ system where the ultra rich all collude and work together because they have like interests and the people who don't want to understand this, or can’t because they are naive just keep telling us we need to continue to participate in a system that disenfranchises us not because its been temporarily broken and needs fixing through participation but instead because the entire purpose of the system is to disenfranchise us and the only solution is to implement democratic representation that addresses the economic issues being manipulated without our input or consent. Any system of democratic representation that aims to exclude economically democratic governance is nothing but a class dictatorship.
This is why I voted for Kamala, as it would've reduced harm for a little while...Long enough to figure out an effective counter. Right now, I am using my voice as best as possible to reduce further harm (with the Big Bad Bill coming into effect soon) I dread losing my insurance and wasting away because untreated it's a guarantee. Given that I live in a mostly Red State, I could be one of the 17 million affected, or spared because I work part-time... If there are elections in the future, I will be voting with harm reduction in mind every time. Unless America becomes a doomed Fascist Nation which devours itself from within.
Stay strong, talk to your neighbours if feasible where you live, work together locally. Every major catastrophe in my area of the world, even ones which totally upended my country (Romania) for a generation, my family survived via community and friend groups.
In a collapsed or collapsing state, mutual aid is mandatory for survival.
Some of the people refuse to believe that the accelerator and steering wheel do anything, even though the pro-cliff people are clearly steering and accelerating.
Some people think we've already gone over the cliff, and thus trying to drive the bus is meaningless.
They're wrong, but they believe it, and people's beliefs are sometimes too precious to let go.
And some people aren't on the bus, just on video chat, but for some reason are still arguing to drive off the cliff.
Yeah fuck that. We’re throwing the cliff people off the cliff. Y’all can keep playing these stupid games.
Yeah fuck that. We’re throwing the cliff people off the cliff.
Any minute now.
We need a "neither" option. If that one wins neither candiate gets to be president and the parties have to pick someone else. Not voting counts as neither.
If only.
The ice cream no longer exists. It hasn’t existed for a long time, and no amount of wishing will bring it back.
I want ice cream, too. But before we can have ice cream again, we need to not die.
You're right - it's more like one group voting to drive off a cliff and the other voting to just drive really close to the cliff in case we decide to go off on some other vote, but so long as the cliff doesn't win now, we can focus on convincing people ice cream is the better option. We don't, and instead wait 4 more years to complain about the lack of ice cream, but that's a separate problem.
Jeez more of this b b both sides same stuff.
Every time I see people complaining about 3rd party voters all I can picture is the "Am I so out of touch?" meme. Like, y'all already shot yourselves in the face 3 times in a row and it surprisingly didn't fail 1/3 times, but you'll blame literally anyone but yourselves. Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money, and we would not be anywhere near where we are now. People vote for trump because they don't want another fucking "nothing will fundamentally change" politician. The country is already shit. It needs to change. But dems are happy with it how it is. They don't care about immigrants, or poor people, or social security, or women's rights, or whatever. They just hold onto those as carrots on a stick. They just want to keep making millions, and would rather trump win so they don't have to actually embrace populist policy. That's why people don't vote. The choice isn't ice cream or drive off a cliff. Its do we drive into a wall and die now, or drive off a cliff so it takes slightly longer to die, the drive off a cliff people shot the 2 people who asked if they could vote for ice cream and that's why the others didn't vote.
Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money
Their absolutely pathetic response to Mamdani's victory in the primary was so flagrant, I'm not even sure how to react to the Democratic party going forward. Not only did they try to stack the deck in Cuomo's favor, but then they threw a fucking tantrum when Cuomo still lost despite their efforts. They just don't seem credible to me anymore.
Replace ice cream with cocaine and that's more realistic
Only organic cocaine for me, thank you.
Being made aware I’m lashed to a bunch of psychotic apes is terrifying and makes me want to kill the rest of the people on the bus and take control myself.
People are the absolute worst.
Can we blast the last point with a megaphone 24/7 in people's faces or is that too much to get the point across?
There are none so deaf as those who refuse to listen.
As Mark Twain once remarked, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."