Gasp. But. The status quo!

You will get progress at the doctor prescribed rate. How dare you think you know your own wants better than some random person on the internet

Pre-empting this to ask everyone to please remain civil.

We know that caffeine is poisonous to deer and that this is a sensitive topic. The Onion has great tips and tricks to help you remain calm in the moment.

But then I remembered he's [deer]. Just like me. He has a family that loves him. And that's an exploitable weakness!

*nervously looks around for people who would shoot me for having magnificent horns or voting ninth party*

"Voting ninth-party" sounds like a level of abstraction that describes writing in a termite mound in the Gondswana Rainforests.

Wait does this have something to do with that thing with Joe Manchin and Matthew McConaughey?

with the coalition-building and last-minute allegiance changes that goes on in this country it might as well be

Why so abstract? We have 5 parties that have seats in parliament and 9 other registered parties that don't.

"Third-party" in the context of US politics (I think that's where it comes from and is most widely used, owing to its major structural problems that almost inherently create only two major parties federally) is an abstract term referring to any minor political party, not specifically the third-most-popular. There's no such thing as "voting fourth-party", so an nth level of abstraction beyond that becomes absurdist.

Sigh... I was that guy in my 20s, voted for Ross Perot twice. Didn't expect him to win but I wanted to send a message to Washington that I wasn't happy with either party. He got 20% in '92 and 8% in 96.

THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR SUCH SHENANIGANS.

Republicans can vote third party all day long. You will hear no complaints from me. If you are a Republican, please vote third party if you can't vote for anyone else.

Or just stay home. Consider not voting if you are a republican.

As a trans person, please dont let the face eating leopards burn our democracy down. I know the rabid horses aren't much better, but they at least dont explicitly promise to eat our faces.

I do mean that, btw

I'd love it if people just voted, period.

America is fucked and voting for anything other than the big two is throwing away your vote.

I just want to highlight, despite the guffaw this post gave me...

The account is 6 days old. 1 comment and 33 posts.

All the candidates are Johnny Depp's characters

Or we could have rank choice voting! Some places do!

Can you link me? I didn't understand the post title at all.

They're literally asses, but somehow still the obvious choice.

Yeah I live in Australia where we have preferential voting.

I have always voted left of our major parties, because like the rest of the world, our major "left wing" party is centre right and our right wing is way too far to the right. Everyone right if that is extremely racist or a billionaire. Usually both.

But we have options, and even if the major party wins they have to negotiate with the smaller parties if we've won them seats in parliament. Voting for the minor parties and independents first based on policy sends a message that these are the things that matter to us. If they want to win the next election they'll have to support them or we'll continue voting for the minor parties.

The liberals (our right wing party) handled covid and the following months so poorly that they were essentially ousted in western Australia. They are so small now that they hold the same amount of power as the minor parties. Labor (the "left wing" major party) won 46 of the possible 59 seats and the liberals only got 7. They've had to form a coalition with the slightly more right wing minor party to have any voting power. Which has caused them to slip even further right and lose even more votes in the following local elections.

Perhaps the deer introduced (bi)proportional representation and are living the good life now?

That's what allows me to vote 6th party without making my vote useless.

The other day right as early voting was getting going in Texas Matthew McConaughey gives this rambling nonsense spiel about how everybody's bad we should all vote third party. Didn't pick a fucking party to vote for, didn't pick a candidate to vote for, just vomited a nonsense opinion all over everybody. Now he does this while hobnobbing with Greg Abbott on the sidelines of UT games, a school Republicans are in the current process of overrunning and undermining.

Man that pissed me off. He said it right as early voting started. Choose third party because every side's bad. How would you fucking know Matthew? This is Texas. There's only been one side for 35 years. How the fuck would you know both sides are bad? Like I'm not saying he's wrong necessarily I just don't think he has that information.

And if you're going to sit there and blather about voting third party pick a fucking third party. Which third party Matthew McConaughey? Who you backing? Are you saying vote libertarian? You picking up the green party? I don't even remember seeing them on the ballot. Pick a candidate you bongo playing lunatic. Fucking coward.

it's commentary on matthew mcconaughey's statement.

Except if one would've voted GOP. Then a third party is an amazing choice.

Dunno if that tracks in the current climate. Even Libertarians seem to be a bit pissed off at Trump.

or... representative democracy. where nobody "wins", and the percentage of votes decides the percentage of representatives in parliament.

This one would require more reworking of our Legislative Branch. There are 435? Representatives currently, so the country is broken up into 435 house districts, with each district/ community voting for a single person to represent them. So you have a quantization problem; you can't really split a single person.

I'm not saying I can't imagine a world where we do it (whole states vote for all the Representatives from their state?), only that meaningful change is an uphill battle against 250 years of coagulated inertia + notably bad actors now diffuse through the system.

Hobnobbing with Abbott is always gross.

Still, with my parents dyed-in-the-wool Texas Republicans who were at least enjoying parroting "Talarico wants to make everyone trans" whether or not they earnestly believed it, the best I'm hoping for is that they are disgusted enough with Paxton to stay home or vote third party. My mom was disgusted enough with Trump the second time to write in Condolezza Rice (Dad is still a fan), so that's about where the bar is. People like them will never think Democrats are anything but bad, so giving them social permission to abandon Republicans seems useful.

Which of the two major parties stands against capitalism again?

here voting for a representative is optional. you vote separately for what party you want to govern locally and nationally, and they get that percentage of the seats (with a lower bound of 4%) to assign members to. if you want a specific person in a seat, you mark their name, and they'll get a guaranteed seat if a certain number of people mark them (and there's enough seats).

we're actually in the middle of an election fraud investigation right now because a relatively unknown member of a party got enough personal votes to get a national seat, and all of them came from the area where he lives. it sounds less serious when you learn that the total number of votes needed for him to get in was about 800, and that was split over three districts.

Which third party has a chance to actually win or do something and isn't just throwing your vote out?

Neither, unfortunately, but we have a two-party system, and one side is openly fascist, so I would advise that anyone who doesn't like fascism vote for the other non-fascist (arguably less-fascist) party.

I don't like voting for the "lesser evil" and wish things were better, but voting for unviable candidates out of a sense of blind idealism is worse, because it empowers the most regressive movements to succeed.

We don't currently live in a real democracy, but we have a chance to turn things around. If you decide to give up and let the fascists win, you're one of the bad guys.

We know and disapprove

All of them, complain about non-voters not voters.

If you have a path to change the system of governance, that could be worth pursuing. But voting isn’t a path to that - just a form of harm reduction within the system.

You still buy groceries - even though you may hate the process of handing over your net worth for something that helps sustain your life and want to change that.

We need Ranked Choice Voting and Mixed Member Proportional districting to reduce the need for strategic voting.

Yep, voting is as meaningless as blowing on your coffee.

did you even comprehend what they said?

Oh is it time for "Both Sides" already? Forgot to mark my calendar

Sure, that's obvious to you and me, as seasoned internet users. But we can't expect lawyers and career politicians to understand such things. They must be ignoring it by accident.

You got me to learn something new today!

Okay let's see. We have a large part of the population who just won't vote. Voter apathy is real.

Of the Democrats and Republicans, you have about 2/3 of each party that are voting like it's a sports team. They'll never change and they'll never think.

The thinking people who vote for each party understand that the third party has no chance and they're trying to sway things generally in their direction.

So the third party victory plan, if I have it correct, is to overcome voter apathy, and also to sway some people who are voting like a sports team from both parties.

If that's your plan for victory, then you don't have a plan for victory. And you're just wasting your vote.

Call me cynical, but I think third parties are funded by people outside the country to sway the election. Just like they only thaw out Jill Stein every 4 years to steal votes from the Democrats, and then they park her in a Russian freezer somewhere for the rest of the time.

It's always time for bOtH sIdEs, because BoTh keep bOtHiNg.

Yes, i know one is pro-church and the other is pro-trans.

My problem is that they are BoTh anti-union and pro-Epstein. That's the rub.

It's not about "which third party", that doesn't matter. You can change that per issue (I do).

You don't vote third party to win, that would be stupid. You won't win.

You vote third party to put pressure on the major parties to change their platform, you're working from within the system to change the system. It's a "protest vote"... and major parties want those votes.

Third party issues become major party issues with enough voter support.

For example, weed legalization was Libertarian, Green, and Socialist party cause since the 1970s, working with NORMAL (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). Over the years, the grass roots (get it?) support grew and grew, even though the major parties were dead set against it.

Those third parties affected change on that issue in many states, and it continues. All thanks to third parties.

Most of their success is locally, not federally, which is in my opinion a lost cause, but again it's not about the party, it's about the issues.

Then why doesn't he do that? What's his issue? Which party this time? You see my point? He's not picking a third party. Because frankly there's not one. Not in Texas. Not this year.

There's not an issue he's backing. There's not a candidate he's backing. There's not a change he's trying to force. After all it's Texas the change would be not Republican. 35 years of the same party controlling the state top to bottom if you want change you'd want that to change. But that's not what he wants. He's not trying to get you to vote for third party. He's trying to get you to not vote Democrat. Him and his friend Greg Abbott don't want that.

By the way just as an aside, the Texas green party is a fucking travesty. They are simply the worst. They don't stand for anything anymore. In my local elections the best environmentally conscious candidate by a mile wouldn't even run under their ticket because was so disgusted with them.

I'm not sure I fully understood that . But the first step in any change is ranked choice voting. If we had that then we could do three parties or more.

As it stands, we've devolved into a two-party system and neither party will give up control.

Sorry if reality offends you

Voting is still worth doing, but certainly not all one should do.