this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
359 points (72.5% liked)
Political Memes
5431 readers
3060 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes.
It's made into an even bigger problem by the fact that the only third party candidates which consistently run for national office, the Libertarians and Greens, are both deeply unserious parties which focus most of their resources on making a ridiculous play for the presidency every four years instead of building up local support first.
Not all small parties that I see on the Wikipedia list even run in the elections? That's weird, makes it look like they aren't even trying. I think they should attend symbolic. Like "hey we are here. We exist" Just being on the Ballot also makes a difference.
But yes, as you say, building up local support should be the first step. My Party lost the seat in the European Parliament, but we actually had many local Elections at the same time, and local we actually won new seats in some City Councils. I hope the people that got that seat will keep up good work and also speak about it, because most people don't even notice anything that happens in their own Councils. That way, we maybe get more votes from people out of that city in bigger elections.
candidates have to get on the ballot in a seperate process for every state. It was actually a big thing this year as a snafu with biden on the ohio ballot https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus/why-joe-biden-could-be-excluded-from-ohios-ballot-and-what-is-to-come/. And not voting for the lesser of the two evils can let the greater evil win. bush and trump both lost the popular vote but got in and bush famously got in due to a court decision about hanging chads in florida. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666812854/the-florida-recount-of-2000-a-nightmare-that-goes-on-haunting . So yes a few american not votes gave us the iraq war.
Most of them don't. Many of them that do run are only state-level parties, not national. Third parties are very splintered in this country, other than the Libertarians and Greens, who, like I said, aren't very serious. Only 4 out of 47 seats in my state, for example, were contested by the Libertarians and Greens.