If y'all could read, I'm sure you'd be pissed as fuck
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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And I'm hoping you grow up and learn how people organize themselves instead of wasting your life feeling morally superior for accomplishing nothing while isolating yourself from all the people you need on your side to change anything.
Just curious, do you live in one of fewer than 10% of districts that’s actually a battleground area? Otherwise, sorry, your vote is meaningless anyway. Gerrymandering guarantees that! Sorry if your feeling of moral superiority fades now.
At the end of the day you can’t blame the user for making do with a systemically broken process. For me, someone like 90+% of Americans, my vote actually, provably, does not matter. At all. I would rather be a part of the record setting number of 3rd party voters, signaling to the system, that we know it’s fucked, and we’re not going to play anymore.
If my vote mattered, I 1000% agree with you. But it doesn’t, so I don’t.
Okay, so first of all, yes, I do live in one of those 10% of districts.
Secondly, you don't even have a candidate, let alone a popular one. It'll be a miracle if an actual leftist candidate can pull 3% of the vote to come in fourth behind the Libertarian candidate.
It is less dangerous to cast a protest vote if you're in a district that is dramatically unbalanced, but if you think you'll make a difference by doing it you are going to be sorely disappointed in November.
I’m glad you do! Then I would be in your boat as well. Your vote matters, sincerely, for the rest of us, use it.
I have yet to say who I’ll vote for, but, I’m not really a leftist, so likely not their non existent candidate.
I don’t think it’s going to be a difference. Or be anymore valuable than voting for a main party, ~~but, it seems every election, the # of votes not going to republican or democrat is growing. (I don’t actually have the data to back that but I think I heard that the last 2 elections, I can try to look if it’s a big deal.)~~ I would rather vote in a manner that, hopefully, elected officials can at least put into a data set, that says “hmmm looks like Americans are more and more disillusioned by this” and maybe that can lead to something. For me, in a not competitive area, that’s way more compelling than the status quo if you get me.
The number of third party votes has gone up and down a little, but over the last 40 years the only third party candidate to get over 5% of the vote in a presidential election was Ross Perot. 2020 actually had very low third party support. The most popular third party candidate left of the Republican party in the last 40 years was Ralph Nader in 2000, and he got about 2.5% of the vote. There will almost certainly be more people voting for third parties in 2024 than there were in 2020, but unless something very weird happens between now and November it will probably just be going back to normal. 3-4% Libertarian and 1-2% Green. That's not gonna do much of anything.
Are you trying to miss my point? Whether I vote or not is actually meaningless. Nothing I do is going to “do much of anything.”
That’s the point. Guess what, the party that best represents me when it comes to voting season, is anything but the status quo. Because the status quo doesn’t work for me. Simple as that. If I vote blue, doesn’t matter, if I vote red, doesn’t matter. There’s 0 moral grandstanding. My vote is actually 100% meaningless, (in other words: empty, hollow, insignificant, mindless, nonsense, nonsensical, pointless, purposeless, senseless, unmeaning, vacuous). Unless it’s at a local level.
Voting anything other than status quo at least makes it worth my time to go stand it line, for me. It’s how I personally justify wasting a few hours of my day. And that’s true for 90% of Americans whether they want to believe it or not. Voting is meaningless. This “democracy” is broken.
Look, I get it. I've spent most of my life living in a very red district in a very blue state. That's not true now, and I'm happy to be taking advantage of it, but I understand. Just remember to actually vote at your local level. It makes more difference in your day to day life than who is president anyway. I'm just trying to be clear about what's going on. Historically and this November.
I do appreciate the fact check. Especially because I did say votes were growing for 3rd party, and that isn’t true. I just don’t understand the moral high horses people get on around this time, which again, in your circumstance, is very valid. But, that’s an increasingly shrinking number of Americans that can say what you do. It’s sad. Just keep that in the back of your mind, basically, unless they’re your neighbor, odds are, their vote also doesn’t matter. Like at all. It actively depresses me haha I would like to live somewhere where I feel like I had a voice.
And yes, locally, I’m getting more involved! I live in a small town of 3000 so yeah, my votes feels impactful and something I actually take seriously. You also tend not to have nut jobs because they’re not worried about such massive hot button problems. I like local government lol
Cool. It's easy to misread tone in a forum like this, so we kinda almost lost the plot there for a minute, but in the end I think we ended up back on the same page. And yeah, I absolutely understand how frustrating it is to have your vote in the big headline grabbing elections be completely meaningless. It sucks. I'm glad you're getting involved where it matters most though. If we want real change it's going to have to filter up from the bottom, not be ordained from the top down.
100%. And yeah, I figured it was something like that, I’m so terrible at conveying how I’m actually coming across over text so sorry if I was combative.
I wasn’t trying to take away from what you were saying at all, cause like I said, I actually agree with like 95% of what you’ve said, I’m just totally disenfranchised with things on a federal level.
Again though, like I have been saying, you’re in an increasingly small number of Americans that can actually say they have a tangible voice right now, make it count! I just wish it applied to more. Good luck and good voting, I hope you get the outcome you want.
Read the title mate. Enjoy your day :).
Minor problem. I'm neither liberal nor angry. I'm trying to get you to understand that purity tests on Lemmy are at best completely useless, and realistically make you a liability to real leftists. What do you think you are accomplishing here? What have you ever done in your life that actually ever made anything better for a single person?