this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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North America’s electoral systems are so broken. It’s painful to see so much negativity, frustration, and fear directed at third parties in general. If that same energy was directed towards building a ranked choice voting system with proportional representation, like single transferable voting (STV), the duopolies would crumble and we could all actually vote for whoever we want without having to worry we might end up with the worst candidate winning.
That's great. I Agree.
We got four more years to do that, if Trump doesn't win.
We've had tons of time to change voting systems.
All the third parties couldve banded together to get it done. Ya know. With all their existing seats of power in federal, state, and local government.
Oh wait.
Hint. Hint.
A third party would be worthless if it won federal office right now. It would be roadblocked every step of the way.
I agree that our voting system needs an overhaul. But don't try to do it by electing a third party president. It'll never work, and if it did, they would be falling flat on their face for four more years and paint a terrible picture for the future of all third parties.
A protest vote means absolutely nothing, except that it helps the least-aligned primary party power. You are bolstering your opponent to do so. Literally cutting off your nose to spite your face.
It doesn’t need to start with the federal level. There’s a growing amount of states that have already adopted some form of ranked choice voting and some of those have also adopted a proportional variant. Progress is being made in some places at lower levels, but it’s slow. Other states have banned it unfortunately.
So then what is to be gained by voting for Stein? A clean conscience about the atrocities abroad?
That's cool. Remember that when there are even more atrocities here against your brown and LGBTQ neighbors, while the atrocities abroad dial it up to 11.
Remember that when there's more middle-class homelessness because there's not enough contractors with all the deported. Or not enough food when there's no immigrant labor to tend to the fields. Certainly not enough domestic labor to keep the farms running along with everything else.
Assuming their original country takes them back. If not, they stay here as detainees. Now we are paying to host them in the prison system. But, at least since illegal immigration is a crime, they can essentially be near-free labor thanks to the 13th amendment. Is that the right way to fix the housing crisis? Or lower the costs of food?
Not saying we can't be world police. That position benefits us greatly and give us tons of soft power. But maybe we should worry about keeping our own house from caving in on itself before we start trying to fix someone else's.
Honestly the idea that a real estate tycoon who is addicted to Big Mac's could fix the housing and food markets is laughably absurd. He'll fix 'em alright...just not in the direction most of his supporters are expecting.
I’m Canadian. I can’t vote for Stein. Nor would I under your current system if I was able to. It’s tragic though that your federal system funnels your people into just 2 options.
Canada’s electoral systems are not much better but at least we have viable third party options up here that have been able to exert pressure and influence our governments and bring attention to important issues. It’s still first past the post, and that should change. Third parties can do good work in the right environment if you let them. We recently got the beginnings of a national pharmacare and dentalcare programs from our social democratic / democratic socialist / progressive party working with the liberals.
At lower levels of government, the US does have third parties other than the Greens that have been putting in work between presidential elections. Vermont’s Progressive Party and New York’s Working Families Party are worth checking out.