Gee wiz y’all why didn’t we just all think of that?! Then we could all do the same thing! Obviously this is stupid to the point of making me wonder if it’s a troll.
But I know a lot of people wonder, how do we fix this when we literally can not vote our way out of it? I see only one easy avenue; create alternative systems for housing, food, and energy. We can start small and fragmented, but then grow as things collapse. Keep voting , but learn how to grow food. Buy land with friends and family. Reuse, repurpose, thrift from nonprofits, post things for free on craigslist. Do what you can until you can or must do more.
The only way a 3rd party can be successful under the current system is its they basically replace a major party and become another part of the duopoly. Otherwise they just split the vote with one party and empower the other. We need to promote ranked choice voting or other election reform before we have the luxury of having multiple valid parties. It’s a right, and like other rights, it must be fought for.
One party is fascist, and the other is liberal. Those are the options for president. I’m sorry, I hate it too, but election reform is necessary for more than 2 parties. Not accepting this reality shows either ignorance and naivete, or ignorance and accelerationism. Voting 3rd party will only let fascists win, and fascists are much worse for leftists than liberals. The US becoming a right wing dictatorship without even liberal democracy will not work out for any form of leftism as well as Biden winning reelection.
We need to put election reform directly to the voters in all states that allow direct participation. Otherwise, Democrats are more likely to back any reform, even though they don’t want to. Campaign for Democrats that put election reform center stage, and make it hard for the party to squash the subset of Dems who do want reform. Market it as anti corruption, and focus on that issue above all others. This will draw non leftists who are sick of the 2 party system to your cause if you do it right. You might have to vote for more conservative Dems, but so long as they can be trusted to dedicate themselves to reform, that’ll help real leftist parties become viable. This will take decades of perseverance and getting very involved in local politics, but as the anti abortion crowd showed, decades of hard work pays off.
Voting 3rd party will only let fascists win, and fascists are much worse for leftists than liberals.
Liberals are just crytpo-facists . they are just as dangerous and will always use fascism as the boogie man while not really addressing its root causes. They will still cut checks for genocide.
Actual fascists are just as bad as people who want social change? Fascism is a very real thing. The leading Republican candidate has frequently made very literal threats, and has already supported one attempted coup.
In absolutely no way are the two parties “just as dangerous”.
You make it sound like you have any. From how the other thread you posted in looks, you basically just parrot the same thing over and over when everyone else gives you very reasonable arguments and explanations on why voting 3rd party in the current system is completely pointless and reform needs to happen first before that’s feasible.
No one is saying to vote dem and just sit on the couch waiting for a miracle.
Vote for democrats but organize, pressure legislators, local politicians, etc
Unionize so your voice becomes louder and you gain bargaining power.
Hold the the democratic party accountable for its BS. Try to steer it more left instead of right.
Educate those around you about the importance of a fairer voting system and the need to fight fascism and get them involved too.
Participate in all elections you can to make sure you give power to those who can actually help you.
There’s so much you can and should be doing beyond voting.
And the democratic party has in fact moved left, even if it doesn’t always seem like it. These things take years and decades, especially for a country like the US where all the stops are in place to make sure change never happens. So yes, reform is possible. It’s slow, painful, and sometimes it feels like you’re accomplishing nothing, but things are changing. They won’t be changing for the better if Republicans ever win though.
So telling people to vote 3rd party, at this point in time, when the US is constantly being bombarded with fascist propaganda, when the education sector is eroding by the day and people are completely politically disenfranchised because of it, is literally just splitting the vote without sending any message or moving the country forward and giving Republicans a win.
If you want 3rd parties to win, instead of praying millions of people magically switch sides, start by getting people actually interested in even caring about politics, because otherwise it’s never going to happen.
Yeah the system itself is deeply fucking broken and we all know this, that doesn’t change the fact that shitty but not-fascism is 100% always better than fascism and the best way to defeat fascism is by supporting its strongest competitor currently even though we don’t like them either. Because the the better alternative to fascism is also still a part of the current system that we all know is broken. And while I personally loath the DNC and so many things about our current system of government and how the country behaves, they are still so much better than the losing alternative.
Third party candidates for president are currently unserious because of a litany of reason that have already been pointed out to you and then ignored by you. Money, existing party infrastructure, experienced campaign consultants, brand names, and just the way the majority Americans live their lives politically.
Fucking libertarians and greens can’t get elected for governor in 95% of states, how they hell do they expect to out fundraise and out campaign the two big dogs on a national level to compete in our fucking ridiculously long election cycle which not only serves to prevent alternatives but also to fund the capitalists at the top of media empires as they serve out disinformation to keep the ignorant angry and the informed in fear.
Voting 3rd party in the US for president is in fact throwing your vote away, but this time it comes with the added bonus of potentially being that last legitimate election you get to participate in. Because that’s what Trumps and his fascist friends plans are, it’s been all over this website and the rest of the internet, Project 2025.
If you don’t like the system as it is because it’s inherently unfair and in an advanced state of decay, are in good company, now you have to decide whether you want to try and fix it the peaceful way, which unfortunately involves voting for biden and getting really involved in working for the third party you prefer to build it up and maybe next cycle take one of the top spots because a Trump loss will put the GOP in a position to where that’s a realistic idea. Or the violent way and start a revolution, which I might be in complete favor of if we could ensure the outcome, but we can’t do that because that’s just not how revolutions work
All 3rd parties in the national ticket are spoilers. There is no exception.
If a 3rd party got enough support to threaten another party they'd start winning down ballot elections. And at that point another party would get supplanted or it would absorb them and change like how the Tea Party was absorbed by Republicans.
Lmk when you start organizing a concerted effort to vote for a viable 3rd party candidate. Just telling people to vote outside the 2 party system is not effective in the slightest.
Vote for people who support ranked choice / final five voting. That’s the best way to ensure 3rd parties can have a say in US politics and that political polarization is discouraged rather than encouraged.
And yeah, it’s Biden + democracy or Trump + fascism. That was the choice to make in 2020, and it’s still the choice in 2024, my friends. Jan 6th demonstrated how clear it is.
I am not against it, but I am curious how ranked choice voting would help. I am of the mind that everyone who votes left will still probably put the Democrat at 1, while everyone who votes right will put the Republican at 1. If the majority is still for one or the other, what do the other rankings even mean? Maybe I’m missing something about how it works?
The other ranks just mean someone you wouldn’t mind winning too, more or less. You’re ranking from favorite to least favorite.
Your favorite is number 1 but if you had to pick another one it’d be number 2, and if you had to pick another one it’d be number 3, etc.
The idea is that as you go down there might actually be candidates with considerable overlap between all the voters, and that also gives chances to more than just 2 people. 3rd parties would actually have some viability in this system.
Here’s a quick example: 50% of voters put candidate A as their number 1 choice and the other 50% but candidate B as their number 1 choice. But out of the totality, 70% put candidate C as their second choice. In a ranked voting system C would win even though it wasn’t the favorite of either, because it was the candidate a big majority was willing to compromise with.
Of course in reality how the choices are tallied varies and it’s not that simple but I hope I managed to illustrate the point.
Okay tell that to the vast majority of voters who aren’t gonna see this meme¹
I’m all for 3rd Party candidates, but now is not the time to fuck around when the majority of voters are still party line seniors. What we need to worry about right now is making sure the guy who has openly expressed their desire to destroy critical government departments doesn’t take office.
I was talking about Trump, obviously, but typing that out I’ve realized I could be referring to all but maybe a couple of the Republican candidates
So when IS it time to vote third party? Last time I checked Republicans all share Trump’s rhetoric.
I was talking about Trump, obviously, but typing that out I’ve realized I could be referring to all but maybe a couple of the Republican candidates
It seems to me voting for only 2 parties has directly led to our current situation. So I ask you, when is it going to be convenient enough to vote 3rd party?
It never will be. Thats the problem with the system: it inherently results in two poles.
We’d have real meaningful change if all the holier than thou third party voters would become hyper engaged within the party nearest to their alignment. Take it over. Got a taste of it with some progressives but most of them turned out to be performance artists all the same.
There is no time to vote for a 3rd party until our system of voting has changed, for example how some jurisdictions have ranked choice voting now. Until that point, voting for a 3rd party only serves to deny a vote to the candidate you would prefer from among the two major parties.
If you think it’s worth sending a message to the Democrats by denying them a vote and making it more likely a Republican gets elected, go ahead I guess, but I will not do that. I will continue to advocate for ranked choice voting in my jurisdiction, but until then I will continue voting for Democrats in all elections.
I would add that only having two parties has not been the direct cause of the current polarization. That has been caused by politicized gerrymandering and a primary system in which a very small number of voters even decide who the candidates are going to be. Becoming active within the party you align most closely with is a way to influence who the candidates are and how they approach issues you care about. Alternatively, you can be like Jill Stein…give up and burn the fucking house down when you disagree with others in your party on a small number of issues
So we’re stuck voting for Democrats with no feasible way to send a message to the party thus inviting mediocrity all because our only other option is a group crazies until we convince the entire voting population to embrace ranked voting, a system that strips Republicans and Democrats of their grip on the system? And third party candidates aren’t feasible because Democrats and Republicans have rigged the voting system because they don’t want to give up their grip on said system.
Essentially it’s somehow easier to change our entire voting system instead of voting for someone without a D or an R next to their name even though plenty of districts, counties, and states have voted in 3rd party candidates.
Seems to me this is a country of cowards
Also
“a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.” John Adams
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” George Washington
You don’t get gerrymandering of this level with more than 2 parties
Local elections are the time. That’s it, that’s the answer. Third parties have to build up heavy momentum in smaller elections and only then build up to bigger ones, and eventually the big chair.
Doing very little at the local level and making a big splash once every four years is not a strategy for public policy or even for public debate, it’s solely a strategy for fundraising.
If someone wants to run a serious third party campaign at any level from dog catcher on up, I’d applaud them for their effort. But if all they ever do is come out of the woodwork for major state or federal level elections and threaten to play spoiler, I have a hard time imagining that they have any serious goals in mind beyond being deeply annoying.
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