I’m not even sure if you understand how voting works. You obviously have the data but managed to figure out the most ineffective and incorrect way to solve the problems we both agree exist.

It’s obvious we’re not convincing each other of anything and no one else is reading this, I suggest we just part ways here.

Man put it together. It’s relevant because I’m talking about a situation where citizens try to start voting reform, and saying that Republicans in charge would be much worse for trying to get that passed. They are clearly worse for that movement than the Democrats. Because they pulled some bullshit to get third parties off the ballot doesn’t mean they are some golden child who’s going to let ranked choice in, but that’s less bad than the stuff Republicans do. Figure it out

Cus I like em

You’re kidding right? Republicans are trying to make it so anyone who changes their name, even married women, can’t vote. They’ve historically fought against black and poor people from voting for decades. Just the policies flying around now are nuts. I haven’t heard of armed Democrats hassling people in line to vote.

Either way the strategy I put forward stands.

Local governments are much more likely to listen to constituents and it’s a lot easier to get stuff on the ballot for local issues than State and national elections. Making that the norm locally can influence the state, and three federal elections are run state by state instead of nationally.

Between the Democrats and the Republicans, who do you think is more likely to? If your city was in Republican control, the party that’s notorious for trying to take away voting rights, do you think they would actually let that through? At least with Democrats pretending to care about people, it’s a platform they can run on, and on the individual level means they are more likely to get elected/reelected.

I feel that wasn’t an effective tactic I’m the last election and is something that can be worked towards, but the amount of support third parties get isn’t substantial enough to make an impact on democratic policy as things are now.

That’s why I feel it’s imperative to focus on ranked choice (or something similar) from local and up, because of the aforementioned Duverger’s law. This could eliminate both establishment parties. Until we fix that, people know that third parties don’t win elections, especially not national ones, and you can’t do anything unless you actually get into a position of power.

You say they don’t care why you vote for them but said you voted third party to send a message or whatever. Seems like you feel that they care about how you vote but not anyone else.

You haven’t really convinced me your strategy will be effective.

Dude if you think I’ve got “unquestioning support of Democratic failures” you really haven’t read a single thing I’ve written.

Look, I hate the whole blue no matter who bullshit, too. And yeah, maybe your specific vote, for someone who didn’t win, didn’t change history. But you gotta admit that the system as it was, and is, does not favor splitting the the vote, since it’s winner takes all. Since we have only two parties powerful enough to potentially win on the national level, if you don’t like Republicans, you’re stuck with Democrats. If you don’t like Democrats, you’re stuck with Republicans. With the system as it is now, on a national level, that’s what we’re working with.

I want to fix that. We should fix that. I’d like to see the Republicans and Democrats ousted. I want to see ranked choice voting. I think you feel the same and I’m not even sure why you’re arguing with me at this point.

But if we want to have meaningful impact, we have to still work with this broken car we’re riding in while working on changing it for something better.

So yeah, vote third party at local levels and work our way up, push for voter reform and build a system that is more equitable, but also vote strategically. We no longer vote for, we vote against.

Yeah you sure showed him. He’s sad in the oval office over it. Good job, you helped get him elected.

Weird, that’s not the president.

Look, the system is fucked up but also you gotta do the good you can even in a broken system.

So your strategy last election was to, what, not vote for Kamala? How’d that work out?

I’m not accepting it, but what I am accepting is that it’s going to take changes in phases to work. We’re going to have to do local voting reform, make ranked choice the standard, push for third party candidates, get rid of gerrymandering, etc.

I’m also accepting the facts of how things were, and are now, before those reforms. Those changes we need to make to fix this haven’t been implemented yet. They certainly didn’t exist in the last election.

Would it have been rad if everyone voted third party last election out of nowhere? Yeah. Might’ve even worked if there was a way to get everyone on board for that.

But we don’t live in the might’ve world, we live in the world of what is.

So yeah, until the system is fixed, it sucks, but the Democrats are what we have to work with to fight the Republicans. I don’t like it, but they are the ones who have that leverage, much more than the green party or whatever.

Way to miss my point but ok.

Well yeah, you do. The problem is that takes a lot of time, and will take massive voting reform, which no one in power has a vested interest in doing.

But we’re not talking about future plans, we’re talking about what happened in the past. Since there wasn’t that voting reform in the past, there was no way for a third party candidate to win.

Ok so with a winner takes all election, a loser is a loser no matter how many votes they get. Sure. I get that.

But there’s still more nuance to that. If you got to choose between something that has 49% of a chance of winning or .01% chance of winning, you’d go with the 49%, right? That’s a better chance of keeping the Republicans from winning.

Don’t get me wrong, Democrats suck ass, and are spineless cowards. But with the system we have now, and had at the last election, they had a better chance of defeating Republicans than the socialist party of America or the Green party.

So are you saying that the third party candidates would’ve won given her resources and backing?

Objectively wrong because there were third party candidates already on the ballot! How could you say they would’ve won when they already were running and lost?! “Oh they would’ve won if they were there” They were there! [These are they!](Third-party and independent candidates for the 2024 United States presidential election - Wikipedia https://share.google/xcOuOQvNZvwLprps9)

Oh damn you right we should’ve voted for the magical third party that definitely would’ve won