If you didn't vote, the current state of things is partially your fault

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨rant@lemmy.sdf.org⁩

I often see people say that the majority of America is against Trump. How did he come to be democratically elected if the majority are against him? I know technically he didn’t get the majority of votes, he got just under 50%, but if all the non-voters cared enough, they could have stopped him from becoming president. I know Kamala Harris wasn’t the best choice either; I know it sucks that there are only two viable options in an election, but that’s the way it is. You have to make the best of a bad situation and participate in the election to prevent the fascist takeover.

When I point out that the majority could have prevented this, I get told a lot of Americans didn’t vote, as if that absolves them. That means the majority either voted for Trump or didn’t care enough to prevent this. If the majority were against him and gave enough of a fuck about what happens to their country, they’d have voted to prevent this.

You don’t get to refrain from participating and then say you aren’t responsible for the outcome. Is this the reason so many university students refuse to study? They think if they don’t study, it makes them not responsible for the outcome of the exam? When I was in university, I heard a lot of people complain that they weren’t ready for the exam because they didn’t study, seemingly oblivious that that was a choice they made. Now people tell me a lot of Americans didn’t vote with that same attitude, as if CHOOSING not to vote was somehow beyond their control and not their responsibility

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AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
When the food is bad in prison, you don’t blame your fellow inmates.

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the_q@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Not voting is a person’s right. Voting a lesser evil is moral blackmail.

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- TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I posted this in another thread but it belongs here too, because we need to exterminate this kind of thinking (blaming voters):
  
  Firstly, and I want to be very clear, this exact line of thinking is, in my view, one of the biggest political self-sabotage of the last decade. The “strategic voting” sermon is a toxic meme: it flatters people into thinking they’re doing game theory, when what they’re actually doing is laundering fear, cynicism, and party discipline into moral obligation.
  
  In a FPtP voting system you must vote strategically. You must vote against the party you like least.
  
  No. I don’t “must” do anything, and neither does any other voter. A vote is not a hostage note. It’s not a loyalty oath. It’s a signal of preference, and people will use it that way whether or not you approve.
  
  And the biggest problem is: the whole argument relies on a fantasy version of voters. It assumes (1) everyone agrees on who is “viable,” (2) everyone shares the same ranking of “least bad,” and (3) everyone will coordinate on the same “strategic” choice. That’s not how human beings behave. People have different risk tolerances, different values, different lines they won’t cross, and different beliefs about what’s possible. You can’t brute-force a coordination problem by scolding individuals.
  
  Worse: preaching “strategic voting” is self-fulfilling sabotage. The constant message of “don’t vote for who you want, vote for who you’re allowed to want” depresses enthusiasm, trains people to expect disappointment as the price of participation, and gives a hall pass to candidates to believe they no longer need to work for your vote. If you’re trying to help a candidate or party win, telling potential supporters that their real preferences are irresponsible is a great way to push them into disengagement, protest votes, or staying home, ALL of which are perfectly viable options.
  
  What the “must vote strategically” story really does: it shifts responsibility away from candidates and parties to earn votes, and puts the onus on voters to simply accept less bad, which loses elections. It turns elections into a blame game where voters are treated like malfunctioning parts that need to be corrected, and it handed the country to fascism.
  
  And I noticed what you did, trying to claim this as Russian propaganda. Again, deeply toxic, but I wouldn’t expect less from someone espousing the strategy that handed the country to Fascism.
  
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  - Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I agree completely with this person’s criticisms of the system except for: No. I don’t “must” do anything, and neither does any other voter.
    
    If the Grim Reaper comes for you and says you can only live if you beat him at a game of Monopoly, you COULD explain to him how it’s a terrible game. You could give him the history of how it was blatantly stolen from another game maker who originally created it as a satire of Capitalism, and how there’s no skill involved, and whoever is lucky enough to land on the best resources first will inevitably win, but, that won’t keep you alive.
    
    You’re playing the game whether you like it or not, and if you refuse to take your turn, it doesn’t end or even stall the game, it just lets the other team win more.
    
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Hegar@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Being angry at normal people because the rich have the ability to buy elections is not productive.

After decades of gerrymandering, voter suppression, disinfo, foreign interference, dark money and legalized bribery, US elections just do not reflect the will of our population. A famous princeton study showed that no major policy initiative has reflected public opinion since the civil rights era. It's conclusion was that functionally we are an oligarchy and not a democracy.

The rich who run the show deserve the scorn and blaming anyone but them helps them.

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plant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Gerrymandering exists

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- dohpaz42@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  This, and First Past the Post.
  
  People treating complex problems like they have binary solutions are myopic in their views. If it were as simple as just voting out the bad guys, we’d be in a whole different world right now, and things pike Project 2025 would not exist.
  
  There is no simple solution, and voting is — by itself — not the solution.
  
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  - goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    And the electoral college. And the senate making land more important than people. Or putting a cap on the numbers of representatives in the house
    
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DaMummy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
So does this mean if somebody worse then Trump is president in the near future, it’ll be your fault for not voting for Trump? Is Trump your fault if you didn’t vote for George W Bush? If every single Jill Stein voter, voted for Hillary, Trump would’ve won. But if every Democrat that voted for Trump, voted for Hillary instead, Hillary would’ve won. Stop voter shaming. Democrats are nominating terrible candidates.

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Marshezezz@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Americans are subjected to a system they didn’t ask for at birth, you are misdirecting your anger. This sad state of life we’re in is because of the rich

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Subdivide6857@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
You have two right wing parties to choose from. Good luck.

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frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
There will always be people who don’t vote. Some because they are legally barred from doing so. Some because they are illegally barred from doing so. Some because they are unethically burdened in ways that make it very difficult to do so. Some because they are unethically misinformed in ways that make it difficult to do so.

Then there’s the people who are consistently harmed by both parties like people who self-medicate, people who grew up as descendants of slaves or of destitute indigenous families, criminals who haven’t been barred from voting (those who have are included above).

Only after you get through all these layers can you find the people that choose not to vote because they didn’t care or they didn’t think it would matter or did so out of protest.

And within that group you will find legitimate reasons to protest vote, like genocide.

In short, when we say that only x% of Americans vote, we don’t really mean all those people simply had the option to easily vote and just didn’t want to.

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Mr_Fish@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Playing devil’s advocate here, a lot of the refuse to vote crowd see the democrats as also unacceptably evil, and in almost any other context I would agree with them. A lot of democrats are failing to push back against Trump and his bullshit, either out of cowardice or acceptance. Not to mention they’re encouraging the whole Isreal situation.

The immediate problem is that the US has roughly the worst voting system. Gerrymandered to shit, FPTP but even worse because you’re not voting directly. The solution (at least for now) is to change the voting system to something that allows third parties without the spoiler effect. Unfortunately there isn’t an easy path to reach that as far as I can see, because both democrats and republicans would be long gone if not for FPTP.

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- FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yeah, it’s hard to get politicians to change the system that git them voted in. Australia has ranked choice voting. I wish we had that in Canada. One of Justin Trudeaus’s campaign promises was to change the voting system but that didn’t end up happening
  
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TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
This mostly expresses a misunderstanding of how voting and electoralism work in a practical, applied manner.

A voter can be strategic and could be moved. Voters are a statistical distribution. And in the course of an election cycle, won’t be moved. It’s the job of politicians to figure out where voters are at and speak to them.

Blaming voters for a failure like 2016 or 2024 is like blaming people for the failures of recycling. Its the job of parties and candidates to go find the votes, to build a winning coalition, to hear the grievances of voters and then to speak to those grievances.

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Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
right after the election, there are some extremely apathetic voters, especially the ones that are heavily persecuted, its almost always i cant be bothered, or how is this going to affect me.

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