This phenomenon is real, just like pirating something means the company loses that amount of money. I plan on bankrupting Nintendo by downloading 8,231,666,67 copies of Tears of the Kingdom.
It's First Past The Post, which means the candidate with the most votes wins, no matter if they have majority approval. The actual way individual votes affect the outcome depends on state, voting district and a bunch of other factors that aren't relevant for this explanation.
Not voting mathematically ends up supporting the candidate with the most votes. Suppose ten people have the right to vote, there's three candidates A/B/C, the vote is split 4/3/1, one person abstained. Candidate A wins. The person abstaining could have voted for B to change that outcome, but didn't, so their abstinence supported A.
Now, who exactly you vote for matters as well. Suppose candidates B and C have similar ideas that very much oppose those of A, but one voter ended up going with C over some issue particularly significant to them. It stands to assume that the C-voter would have been happier with B than A.
By not voting for B, they have inadvertently weakened B's position, which is called a Spoiler Effect: Because they ony have a single vote, any votes not put toward the two most popular candidates end up wasted, as the actually significant race happens between those two.
For those reasons, any vote not spent on Biden risks supporting Trump in the event that he turns out the winner. Thus, if you oppose Trump's politics, it's vital to support Biden (unless you oppose his even more, in which case you're kinda fucked).
First Past The Post with a single, non-transferable vote is an awful system that always leads to binary politics where typically both parties will want to appeal to as many people as possible, sacrificing ideological integrity and eventually leading to a stagnation, unless one side's propaganda happens to shift the overton window in their favour and the whole system begins to gradually shift into their direction as well.
I'm not pretending to have a solution. Voting systems is one hell of a complex topic. All I am certain of is that any system that ends up silencing actual progressive leftist voices is shit and should be abolished.
Man, I suck at recognising humour. I thought the OP was a joke, but the comment might be serious. Ah well, F for eFfort I guess :D
Not voting mathematically ends up supporting the candidate with the most votes.
That's not how math works.
If you don't vote, here is how you mathematically affect each candidate:
A: +0
B: +0
C: +0The difference in percentage points between splits of 5/4 and 5/5 is 5.555...
In absolute terms, yes, not doing anything doesn't support anyone, but in a context where the comparison between candidates is determinant and actual political consequences are on the table, the potential of your vote matters. Choosing not to vote means choosing not to oppose whatever candidate ends up winning.
Choosing to let them win is no different in effect to supporting them, with the exception that it doesn't support a specific candidate up front, but rather lets the rest of the voters decide which candidate profits from your inaction.
Not voting benefits the candidate whose victory was not challenged by your vote. Thus, you're effectively donating your vote to the collective.
Choosing not to vote means choosing not to oppose whatever candidate ends up winning.
No, it means choosing not to support any candidate. You don't vote against a candidate, you vote for one. If there was a vote that just said "Do you want Trump to be president, yes or no?" I'd vote no because that's all my vote is doing, it's voting against someone I don't like.
But voting for Biden isn't just a vote against Trump. Voting for Biden means supporting genocide of Palestinians.
choosing not to oppose whatever candidate ends up winning
So if I want to oppose Biden - which I do because genocide is bad - how should I vote to properly oppose him? Obviously I'm not going to vote Trump. The only options left are third party or not voting. But I imagine you think voting third party would help Trump too.
If you want to effectively oppose Biden, vote for the candidate most likely to beat him. If you want to effectively oppose Trump, vote for the candidate most likely to beat him. If you want to oppose both, throw yourself on the floor and have a tantrum because it's about as useful as voting third party or abstaining.
That's the issue with FPTP and Spoiler Effect. You can vote for the lesser evil, to buy time for efforts to actually install some form of democracy. Not voting doesn't oppose Biden nor Trump. It just passes the decision on to the rest. If you didn't try to change the outcome, you're tacitly agreeing with it.
The US "democracy" is fucked up. There's no winning. The best you can do is try to keep the political course from steering into Nazi waters, because that's sure to fuck up any chance of change, peaceful or otherwise.
If you didn't try to change the outcome, you're tacitly agreeing with it.
On the contrary; participation in the electoral system is an implicit endorsement of the legitimacy of the system.
This is recognized by the US government whenever it questions the legitimacy of elections in other countries based on voter participation and in it's support of voting boycotts such as occurred in Venezuela.
The fact that the very opposite rhetoric is used when convenient for domestic purposes is simply just another example of American hypocrisy, "one set of rules for us and another set for everybody else'.
Unfortunately you cannot prevent fascism by voting for the lesser fascist. The direction of your energy into doing so is an explicit part of the strategy for maintaining the slide into fascism. The rigged game can only be beaten by rejecting it's rules.
So your suggestion is to boycott the vote, in the anticipation that this will somehow change the electoral system? That suddenly, the people in charge will go "Oh wow, we've got such low voter turnout, I guess we'll need to abolish the system that keeps us in power"? They won't apply those same rules anyway. Hence my suggestion would be to use the system to slow the descent while mobilising people outside of it to affect change.
But you got me curious. What strategy to you suggest to fix that system? My personal hope so far lies with educating people, having discussions like this one, in the distant optimism that it will erode support in the system and the backlash when inevitably, this conflict of ideologies escalates to violence or at least massed protests. But I'm an idealist, and tend to be naive, so I'd love to know your take.
I'm not the person you were talking to but I'll make a few points
Hence my suggestion would be to use the system to slow the descent while mobilising people outside of it to affect change.
You act like these are things that do not have an effect on one another.
If you legitimise the system by telling people to vote in it, you impact the ability you have to mobilise people to revolt against that system.
How much total organising energy do you suppose is spent on electoralism? You vote every 2 years, and organisers spend many months of those 2 years entirely dedicated to their electoralism. Voters too spend those months dedicated to following the electoralism. This is a VAST quantity of bandwidth spent that then does not go into non-electoral organising.
And you're forgetting, the entire purpose of elections in the first place is as a steam valve within society. An outlet for the build up of anger that would turn into revolutionary energy if not for the elections. You are advocating for something that literally exists for the express purpose of preventing revolution.
My personal hope so far lies with educating people, having discussions like this one, in the distant optimism that it will erode support in the system and the backlash when inevitably, this conflict of ideologies escalates to violence or at least massed protests
This doesn't magically happen all by itself. It happens as a result of organisers putting the work in to make it happen. It is significantly less likely for it to happen in america where living standards are high compared to any country in the global south where people have considerably more reason to risk their lives and bodies for revolution, and I think you understand that it doesn't spontaneously occur in the global south either but is instead a product of organisers building it. You don't have those organisers if they're dedicated to legitimising electoralism. They believe in its legitimacy. YOU still believe in its legitimacy, although you're teetering on the edge with some of your rhetoric. Cross that line and commit to it.
You are advocating for something that literally exists for the express purpose of preventing revolution.
I did not consider that angle, but then, my frustration doesn't actually resolve from ticking a box that I hate. I wouldn't have guessed that other people might feel differently about that.
You're right, the frustration people feel doesn't resolve from ticking a box. The issue is that belief in ticking the box represents a hope of their frustration changing. It represents the possibility of change happening.
This is how it functions as a steam valve for the machine to let off frustration-energy.
It is at the precise moment that people reject electoralism that they become genuinely revolutionary, because it is at that moment that they have genuinely given up on the structures presented by the existing system as a means for change. Once you give up on that you truly seek revolution, because you genuinely accept that there is no other path to change.
The question here is whether you've crossed the line to radicalise yet, like so many of us have. Or whether you think screaming
at people in the Most Important Election of Our Lives:tm: (Again) will this time achieve anything after the "most progressive president in history" or whatever bullshit they were pushing.This is a question as old as socialism. Rosa Luxemburg's book, Reform or Revolution, is very much worth your time.
The question here is whether you've crossed the line to radicalise yet, like so many of us have.
I've been teetering on that edge for a while now. I can't give you a simple answer, because I'm a coward and an optimist that doesn't like severe sudden changes. I want things to get better, but I'm afraid of the anxiety a revolution would cause me.
On the other hand, there's a part of me that argues the anxiety would be worth the price and my reluctance is selfish. It waxes and wanes with my mood and energy. Particularly in the grinding mill of wage slavery, those swings have become more erratic and extreme.
Or whether you think screaming vote at people in the Most Important Election of Our Lives:tm: (Again) will this time achieve anything after the "most progressive president in history" or whatever bullshit they were pushing.
Yeah no, Most Important is a load of bull, and most progressive president (of the US) is probably neither true nor a particularly significant achievement for a nation whose history started with genocide, went on with slavery, half-hearted abolition motivated by politics rather than morals, never actually fixing anything but elections (domestic and foreign) and secured peace at the price of getting to freely infiltrate their military all over Europe and leverage the treaties to support - you guessed it - more genocide.
I'm no friend of the US politics and established. I'm just deep in denial and dismantling that delusion in a mind as rigid as mine is taking a long time.
I want to believe in peaceful means. I want to believe that the election can at least help slow the descent long enough for local movements to gather support, expand into regional, national and global initiatives to build a better world.
Rationally, you are right. Emotionally, I am still slave to my irrationality.
I don't see it as irrational. We are all trying to escape Plato's cave, everything until that escape seems completely rational.
throw yourself on the floor and have a tantrum because it's about as useful as voting third party or abstaining.
Wanting to oppose both genocide supporters is a tantrum?
Not at all! I hate both of them, and take no issue with voicing that. That was meant more as a comparison that not even vocal protest would change the fucked-up fact that one of them is going to be in power, precisely because the system is rigged against such influence.
Though I do believe that the lesser evil is preferable until change from outside the system enables actually good options to gain a foothold. In my opinion, one of them is less bad, and voting for him to stall for time is a reasonable option while other efforts are made to eventually render the vote entirely obsolete.
By not voting for B, they have inadvertently weakened B's position, which is called a Spoiler Effect: Because they ony have a single vote, any votes not put toward the two most popular candidates end up wasted, as the actually significant race happens between those two.
None of which is actually true.
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Not voting isn't supporting whatever candidate for the same reason piracy isn't stealing: The intersection of people who'd have bought it if they couldn't pirate is never everyone and there's a myriad factors involved. Piracy can be reduced by localised pricing and easier access, whereas hunting down pirates doesn't help. Same approach works in politics.
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People aren't ideological dots on the plane of ideologies, with a probability distribution in a circle around that point. Politics as a whole can't be described by a set of coordinates. If you've got a large wheel that turns only in one direction, in the long run the torque you apply won't make a difference, you can't revert it.
More inportant than these two combined is that it's all perceptions. On the base level it's not a given that the 2nd place was truly closer to winning than the 3rd. It is in the case of the US president, but not on the smaller, more local scale. Nobody's vote is actually locked in and even the voters of the top 2 choices are rarely as inflexible as they're portrayed. The deeper issue of perception is that the media landscape determines how people think. As near as 4 years ago I wouldn't have goven much credit to this myself, but the treatment of Sanders and Corbyn show beyond doubt that sustained media campaigns still work wonders and that a lot of assumptions are just horseshit. Consider, Bernie Sanders is possibly the only presidential hopeful in the US who won the first 3 states and still wasn't made candidate. The media always talks about momentum, but momentum isn't a point boost from election results, it's coverage after the fact. Winning Nevada by a landslide means fuckall if the media that's nominally friendly can't shut up about how some old sellout is going to support your corpse of an opponent.
That's the rule of capital, a fact that's unprofitable need not be true, until it becomes profitable.
You're reintroducing complexity into my simplified example and making very valid points about external factors influencing decisions, but I'd like to hear your argument for how the Spoiler Effect isn't real.
The comparison with piracy falls flat because one is a personal entertainment with limited effect where inaction merely affect your ability to enjoy the game, the other is a political affair where even inaction can have consequences on others.
Agreement in all points.
I found another way to sum up my point in the meantime: Not voting means that you let the rest decide, and effectively give your assent to their decision in advance. Spoiler voting may hurt your preferred major party. Hence, voting for that major party is the most reasonable choice within the boundaries of the election.
But outside of it, FPTP and the liberal bourgeoisie should just take a fucking hike.
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Someone not voting for you is YOUR failure, not the voter's failure. Earn their vote or piss off.
The electorate didn't fail you, you failed the electorate.
Thanks for your polite and productive contribution! I understand your argument much more clearly now, and I deeply appreciate you disregarding Hanlon's Razor and assuming malice rather than ignorance. I'm sure that's the way to create a better and more friendly society.
Death to America is based tho. Oligarchic Superpowers ought to be destroyed.
This is the quickest way to get a lib to go mask off. It works every single time. You say this, and then they say it's the only option you have, and then you point out that it doesn't seem like a very functional system. That's the point where they screech about some non WASP country and say ITS BETTER THAN COUNTRY. And then you can point out that's racist and then that lib doesn't want to talk to you anymore.
This one simple cheat code works every time to get racist imperialist libs to shut the fuck up
Or point out that people vote pretty much everywhere that's not an absolute monarchy, they just don't trust everyone with the franchise. They they say that that's why America is more free because everyone can vote. Then you ask about children, or convicts, or noncitizens that live in the country. Then they say that not everyone can be trusted to vote. Then you hit them with something
remember, don't vote early and don't vote often
remember that voting for anyone but biden is voting for trump
