I live in a rural area and all options are basically the same. The only real difference is Republicans usually going hard on the maga shit. Policy wise there’s not a ton of difference. Sometimes we’ll get a libertarian.
Wow, where do you live that there aren’t any third parties that align with your values or politics?
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 4 months ago
bloodfart@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
if you see an option with a write in part, write in someone instead of casting a vote for a candidate you don’t like.
if there’s not an option to write in your choice, don’t fill that part out.
someone else commented and talked about being in a place where everything is pretty much dominated by the republican political machine. in those cases it might be better to focus on mutual aid and working in local county and town meetings instead of attaching yourself to a party.
if you’ve got the time, putting the screws to someone in a county board of commissioners meeting over spending a bunch of money on the local cops riot gear that they never use instead of straightening up peoples screwy culverts is a sure win.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 4 months ago
I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Between my job and everything else I have going on I don’t have the free time or mental energy for that level of political activism.
bloodfart@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
me neither anymore tbh, especially when meetings are scheduled around someone elses time and i gotta take off work or whatever to make em.
if you really feel left out, just don’t vote for people that don’t align with you no matter who else is on the ticket and help out the people around you when you can.
sometimes the best activism we can do is just taking care of each other!
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The good ol us of a
bloodfart@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
I like party for socialism and liberation. If they don’t have a candidate listed on your states ballot but they’re running one you can write em in.
What kind of politics do you have? I suggested psl because they’re running on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to weapons shipments to Israel and those issues seem to be what’s disgusting people with the democrats and republicans this go around, but what else motivates you?
SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 4 months ago
you can write em in.
Write in candidates to defeat the two party system and FPTP voting. Brilliant.
bloodfart@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
every ballot is tallied. if one of the parties wants to pick up votes in your district they look at what people voted for in the past and try to either adopt that platform or clearly tell people they already have that platform.
if, as the OP states, our elected representatives don’t actually represent us, the first step is to say in a way that cannot be denied or covered up what positions they would need to take up in order to represent us.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Third parties really don’t matter. You have one vote which is against the guy who will do his part for Project 2025 (end democracy – and Democrats – and install a one-party autocratic state, who doesn’t even have to pretend to care what you think). And you do that by voting for the other popular guy, the Democrat.
If you vote for a third party or you don’t vote, then you do nothing to stop the rise of autocracy. Obviously, a vote for the Republican is a vote to accelerate the one-party autocracy process. So those are your options.
Third parties only act as spoilers in FPTP elections, and the campaign machines for both major parties regard and will regard them as such.
Ross Perot ran for President as an independent as a third party candidate getting 18% of the vote and none of the EC, and is the record holder for the largest share by a third-party presidential candidate.
bloodfart@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
It’s wild that you chose Perot as your example when he’s generally accepted as having not been a spoiler and his anti-nafta platform drug it kicking and screaming into daylight for everyone to see.
If anything, Perot ‘92 was a great example of a non spoiler third party forcing both major parties to actually be held accountable for their policies.
When both parties don’t represent you, vote for one that does!
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Okay, if you don’t care which of the two guys gets elected (Democrat or Republican) then sure, vote for the third party of your choice. That said, we don’t know if Perot was a successful spoiler. If Perot pulled (approximately) two GOP voters for every one Democrat, then yes, he was a successful spoiler (the math is even more sophisticates, since this would have to be calculated for each swing state and then summed up) but we don’t know.
But in 2024, every Republican voted into office advances the effort towards turning the US into a one party autocracy. This means you have to vote tactically based on if you want that process sped up, slowed down or don’t care. Unless you’re close enough to a billionaire to get the fuck out of dodge (e.g. leave the US for extended leave) then a Trump presidency is going to lead to a lot of Trumpgrets, and a risky venture through the gravity well of a purge and holocaust.
I can’t speak for you guys, but I don’t want to risk dying in a concentration camp, and I can’t emphasize enough how much that is totally not hyperbole.
bloodfart@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
We do know if Perot functioned as a spoiler. We know because after hw bush lost a bunch of people threw around the spoiler accusation and that prompted several groups to analyze the results in depth as you said would be necessary over the next decade.
It turns out that Perot did have more pull amongst conservative voters but the electoral college effect was only to reduce Clinton’s margin of victory.
Which sounds crazy unless you grew up in an area that was filled with conservative voters who had no desire to get behind hw bush after he lied about taxes.
Clinton’s success came from being conservative enough to rob pissed republican voters from their party, not from Perot siphoning off hw bush’s base.
Anyway, I’ll leave aside the question of how anyone can suggest that a regime actively supplying and denying a genocide while suppressing protests against it doesn’t count as fascist already and ask: if you really believe that project 2025 represents a move towards one party autocracy, and you remember January 6, what makes you think that Biden being declared the winner is going to stop the fascist state you fear?
If you truly believe that the republicans are as big a threat as you say then it doesn’t matter how people vote, they’ll just attempt a coup better this time. You’d make more sense if you were telling people to arm themselves instead of vote.