this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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And for those of you who are in a similar situation as me, where your presidential vote for the most part doesn't matter (Trump's going to win by a minimum of 15 points in my state), your votes on down ballot issues do matter.
Local and state elections are where change starts. So get out there and vote, even if it's mostly doing harm reduction.
The same is true for blue states.
If your vote is not important because your state is locked in on a presidential candidate, local issues / candidates are worth voting on. They can have a more direct impact on your day to day.
I'm gonna piggyback on this to make a related point:
If you take it down from +15 points to +14 points, that's gonna cost the GOP more money next time around. You don't have to win your state to make an impact. If you can make it more expensive to win your state, that takes funds away from their campaigns in other states.
(And if you make it cheaper for Democrats to win your state, that frees up funds for campaigns in other states.)
you could also vote for a different president candidate, like "none of the above" while voting for a local candidate you do like.
Why would that mean anything?
There are really only three choices. Democrat, Republican, and "I don't care you guys pick".
It's doesn't mean anything because that's what everyone thinks the choices are.
If someone other than D or R started to get some serious traction, you could see a snowball over 8-12 years.
Not really, the feedback cycle is that as a third party gains traction, the party most similar will lose support till the other party will dominate. This still continues till the third party quits or takes over and the previous pary stops.
This leads to Republicans sponsoring third parties more similar to Democrats and Democrats sponsoring parties more similar to Republicans.
The only way to get out of this cycle is to implement some other sort of voting, ranked choice for example. I'm all for that, but until then, voting third party will only hurt the ideology closest party.
First past the post always devolves into a two party system. The electoral college prevents any medium sized change from having an impact.
Half of D and R vote that way because they identify that way. They won't change. A third party would have to get EVERYONE else to have a chance. And that will never happen in the current system. Never. Fantasy Land.
Idealism over efficacy is why the world moves to the right.
While I'm used to the issues of FPTP, I can't pretend to understand the basic premise behind the electoral college.
Independents can get elected and new parties can arrise in FPTP, despite being more difficult than some other systems; so my guess is that I'm wildly underestimatong the fuckery that is the electoral college.
Nearly everyone thinks that's what the choices are because they are cognizant of reality.
Yeah, as other's have pointed out, I'm really underestimating the issues of the electoral college in the USA.