Or at least all the candidates counted with the dataset I could find

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    5 hours ago

    15million people that voted Biden last time couldn't be bothered putting in a protest vote for something.

    If Americans actually did this it would scare the fuck out of the two parties to see a third, fourth and fifth candidate with millions of votes.

    Instead they resign themselves to apathy and "it's wasted anyway". When actually getting up and doing that shit directly empowered things like the UK leaving the EU.

    If the 15million missing voters were on other parties instead of just being absent the Dems would have to reckon with "we need to be more like this third party to get those votes". But instead what we're seeing is "we need to be more like Republicans to get those votes"

    What is it with americans and simply not voting or recognising political power exists within votes outside the two parties?

    • peppersky [he/him, any]
      ·
      24 minutes ago

      15million people that voted Biden last time couldn't be bothered putting in a protest vote for something.

      If Americans actually did this it would scare the fuck out of the two parties to see a third, fourth and fifth candidate with millions of votes.

      No it wouldn't. Come on.

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        17 minutes ago

        In terms of american history it would surely because it would be unprecedented.

        I just can't bring myself to say it's pointless because it's not. I live in a country with a 2 party fptp system where protest votes have fundamentally changed the country forever. There's political power in it and it's being left on the table instead of used and all I see is a cultural issue with americans simply not being bothered to do it because they do not recognise that there is a certain amount of power held within it. Not revolutionary power obviously, it isn't going to create socialism, but there's actual power in it for pulling other parties in a specific direction that is politically un-utilised by americans and the only reason I ever hear when asking people why makes it sound cultural.

        • peppersky [he/him, any]
          ·
          9 minutes ago

          no. you are just wrong. a million votes here or there for a third party candidate wouldn't change shit, except you'd give democrats a clear target for whom to blame the win of trump on. its not like every single other country in the western world, even those with not completely insane electoral systems, hasn't been experiencing a giant right wing shift over the last few decades-

    • blobjim [he/him]
      ·
      2 hours ago

      it would scare the fuck out of the two parties

      I think seeing over 100k votes for communists might do that at least a little bit. And Greens coming in 3rd.

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        33 minutes ago

        Maybe so. But I think addressing the culture of non-voting instead of protest-voting is a valid one. It's sucking out political power that exists and could be genuinely powerful if put to use but because people are convinced it's pointless they simply do not bother. A huge amount of power is sitting right there and americans are just culturally propagandised into not using it.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
      ·
      2 hours ago

      It's the electoral college. There's no point in voting if you don't live in a swing state. Republicans only won the popular vote 2 times since 1992 and it doesn't mean much as far as US electoral politics is concerned. It's literally just trivia to make libs feel better whenever they eat shit.

      I've always thought a better way for US third parties to approach this is to form a regional party that caters to a particular state or region. They probably still wouldn't win, but they could get to a point where they could outmuscle one of the parties. I think somewhere like Vermont could be a good place, a solid blue state that's taken for granted as a solid blue state by the DNC.

      Before Sanders joined Congress, he actually was in a good spot as mayor of Burlington. Sanders should've tried building a third party or more seriously help a preexisting third party that's centered around Vermont. If done right, this party could've gone to the point where city counsel and mayors throughout Vermont are either members of that party or have to pay political tribute to that party. They probably won't be anywhere close to electing a governor or earning an electoral vote, but the Republicans don't exactly have a serious presence in Vermont either. They just need to have a larger state presence within Vermont than the Republicans.

      Browsing through Wikipedia, apparently Vermont already has this party called the Vermont Progressive Party with a decent amount of positions with Vermont. And Sanders did help build the party, which makes me think he never should've gone to Congress to shill for Zionists and instead stayed in Vermont working tirelessly to continue building the party. The main issue is that it's just a socdem party and electoralism in general can only take you so far.

      I think it's wiser for the various ML parties in the US to have a gentlemen's agreement where they divide the US into various zones and focus their organizing on their assigned zones only. If nothing else, it will cut down on embarrassing sectarianism like when PSL and FRSO got into a fight over Palestinian organizing in Chicago(?).

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        36 minutes ago

        You say "it's the electoral college" but what does that functionally mean?

        Here in the UK the election is done by regional representatives. IE, you vote and the winner in your district is an MP and the party with the most MPs gets their leader as the Prime Minister.

        What's the difference? If I vote for a party that isn't one of the 2 main parties, my vote does not achieve anything in terms of affecting who gets power. It's a protest vote.

        I don't see how there is a difference here. The only difference I see is cultural. Americans see it as utterly pointless and therefore don't bother at all, Brits on the other hand are stubborn fuckers and will go out and protest vote and those protest votes actually do achieve political consequences when they're big enough, such as UKIP's success in forcing the Tories to give a Brexit referendum "or else we'll make sure you lose".

        There are fundamentally enough non-voters in this election to achieve huge things with if Americans adopted the stubbornness to actually go third party, but they're successfully convinced to not bother.