electoralism

Either do it or don't fucking hell it's a piece of paper why do you have to do all this moralizing lib shit just make a decision

If you get to vote on school board check if there are any moms for liberty types.

But yeah I don't know why you wouldn't. It takes minutes and your vote is consequential locally.

Remember to vote against the judges

Kill the lib in your brain that spends any energy thinking about this shit. Don't let libs colonize your brain into entertaining counterrevolutionary activities.

I show up for 10 minutes, maybe do a web search or two, check some boxes and never fucking think about that shit again. That is the upper ceiling for how much thought you should be giving to electoralism.

I voted PSL for president and left my Senate and House races blank because neither of them said shit about Palestine the whole election other than condeming Iran's retaliation. I did vote straight Dem on my my state and local races because local Republicans are fucking nuts where I am. I get to vote on judges and I would definitely rather be in front of a democratic judge 90% of the time.

You time would be better spent applying for a class action lawsuit. I got like $70 from Juul.

For me there was one candidate who challenged our shitty anti-homeless city councilman who was pretty dope and progressive. She actually is a long time homeless advocate and lawyer and also did pro bono work for arrested pro-palenstine protestors. And she is openly bi and poly

Also state provisions can matter, even if they arent perfect or are marginally good. In CA there is a proposition to legalize gay marriage in the state constitution (in case Oberfell gets overturned) as well as rent control and abolishing unpaid prisoner labor.

There might be smaller scale elections like school board that have some wacky anti trans or anti vax single issue candidate that is worth defeating.

But also I advocate for people to just not vote if they dont want to. Im just a nerd for filling in bubbles and knowing that i made a number go up by 1

Whatever. If you think it's worth your time to research them all and pick go for it. If not, don't. The dsa or psl might have a voting guide for your area.

yay. as a former anarchist who never voted, I can tell you that not voting definitely didn't work.

i just spend at most 10 minutes googling the names to figure out which candidates are the least demonic. its not worth any more investment than that tbh

If you can prevent a psycho who wants to kill trans kids from getting on your local school board or something, by all means. But ultimately, touching grass and organizing is a better use of your time than normalizing about your ballot

The ones where there was a better option, I picked it. The rest I wrote something in

If everyone on the ballot supports genocide or is silent about genocide, then there's nobody to vote for and the decision is made for you.

If anyone on the ballot denounces the genocide in Palestine and their record backs the denunciation up, then you should vote for them.

None of my local Dems said anything against the genocide so I didn't vote for Dems down-ballot either.

surely yay - i'm probably more lib on voting than half the site (I don't outright refuse because 's system has the veneer of being more representative and i'm not directly blocked from voting for socialists), but i mean, if you're there why wouldn't you?

I feel like America's system is inherently designed to make local more powerful in the day-to-day then federal, so you may as well either find a leftist somewhere on the downballot stuff or at least fuck over some ghouls/spill the positions of existing judges or whatever.

just don't hold any belief that you're immediately making a difference. every single bit of that ballot from top to bottom is trimming around the edges and we have to do the work elsewhere, but if you actually lined up for just the top choice, you're already a lib anyway and you may as well do the rest for a laugh

your username holds the answer

Yes vote local. Especially against judges.

I didn't vote down ballot this year. I voted in the primaries for the candidates that seemed to have good policy and all lost. So most, if not all, of my entire ballot was full of unopposed Democrats with shitty views and policies. TBF I also didn't research if any 3rd parties were running in those elections, but I doubt it. Also just feels like its harder now since they (the Green or PSL) didn't have ballot access locally, even though I've seen them in the past.

do some googling for the races you don't have a horse in for the most progressive candidate and write them in if they're not on your ballot.

if you have access to ai; use that instead if you have a lot of spare credits and use google confirm it; ai messes up a lot.

There's a couple democrats that I actually respect on a local level. But yeah, tuning out the do-nothing-dems that will likely just take credit for what local socialists do.

I would say vote 3rd party and on legislation, that's what I do.