Protest-non-voters won’t believe this one simple trick.
Sorry I forget genocide and mass imprisonment is okay if it might give you benefits.
Yet another one who doesn’t understand primaries or getting better candidates on the ballot of a major party. Not believing this one simple trick: confirmed.
Reality is not all rainbows & butterflies. Systems operate according to rules we don’t control no matter how much we stubbornly refuse to accept them until we work the system to change it. Denying the system exists doesn’t change it.
Fact: the US voting system (plurality voting) lacks the sincere favorite criterion[1]. Fact: that means strategy exists to optimize outcomes, and not following it with protest(-non)-voting can functionally help elect the candidate you like least, directly backfire, and cause worse real-world outcomes for your own values. Fact: that means lesser-evil voting is necessary in close, high-stakes races to minimize losses.
Voting in a way that backfires has real-world consequences. Denying it is like denying the consequences of pulling the trigger when a loaded gun is aimed at your nuts. If you have to vote for the only viable candidate who will realistically refrain from pulling the trigger & don’t (in a cute little protest), then you’re still getting nuts blown off. Protest(-non)-voting to blast your nuts off every time doesn’t lead anywhere.
There are viable ways to reform the system: lobby legislation with enough organization & support, elect your candidates to other offices (local, congressional, etc) to build popular support, get your candidate to run as a major party in national partisan races, vote lesser-evil in national partisan elections until your candidate is on the ballot as a major party.
Anything else is blasting yourself in the nuts. Worse, it’s blasting off your neighbors’ nuts & ovaries, too. Your neighbors don’t want to vote lesser-evil either, but they’re not stupid enough to pretend that other moves won’t blast off their nuts.
It’s straightforward mathematics: plurality voting violates independence of irrelevant alternatives, majority loser criterion, independence of clones.
↩︎There is, therefore, a simple way to affect the outcome of a plurality election in your favour without having to convince anyone else to support you. If you introduce a clone of an opponent then the vote for your opponent may split between your opponent and their clone, meaning that you require fewer votes to win. In practice, this fact is well known and some people in British elections do not vote for their preferred candidate because they do not want to split the vote against the party they dislike.
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is freedom bad?
Depends on the freedom.
- American freedom to use and abuse anyone under you in the capitalist hierarchy. Bad.
- Freedom to get cared for at any hospital of your own choosing without having to sell your kidney? Not bad.
- Freedom to masturbate to incest porn? Not bad. (Looking at you UK)
- Freedom to kill people as long as you’re operating a multiple ton heavy vehicle with practically 0 consequenses. Bad.
Sounds like you should run for office under those talking points. Good luck.
I’m really happy that Hungarians got their wannabe president-for-life kicked out peacefully. :)
Regarding Russia - Putin’s popularity is in a clear downward dive, but a dive from very high altitude (he has built a formidable propaganda machinery and brainwashed people severely) so it will take time. His regime currently has almost full control of Internet use in Russia, so the only channels which can operate freely are VPN tunnels to services hosted abroad (Telegram being most popular). I hope self-organizing mesh networks will also offer a challenge in cities, but that remains to be seen.
Sadly, unlike Orban, Putin has also rebuilt the system so that he can order arbitrary violence (e.g. poisonings). As a result, most likely in Russia, when time comes, it will be bloody. But there’s a positive thing about Putin: he’s old and might just die one day (or touch the wrong door handle without gloves, if others near him decide he’s too old), opening an avenue for peaceful change.
Trump will be kicked out, I’m 95% sure of that. But Americans will have to rethink the role and authority of the president quite soon after that. And I mean limiting it.
When Putin goes it will be another 1990s scramble for power and the Russian people will follow whomever is the biggest thug who makes them feel a sense of pride and stability, which is precisely how Putin came to power.
People forget that before Putin Russia was in economic collapse throughout the 90s. And that all of Russian history the central government been authoritarian and corrupt af
No, no, we can’t stop fascism in the US by voting them out of office. We must overthrow democracy altogether, kill the billionaires, hand over the deeds to the tenants, ban hate speech and hate thought, eliminate capitalism and replace the profit motive with 5-year plans built by knowledgeable citizen-committees, and re-educate the folks who think any of that is a bad idea.
Then and only then can we peacefully hand power back to a new one-party democracy like so many countries have successfully done in the past after their own People’s Revolutions.
Aye, comrade. It is the only way! *tankie salute*
If two party democracy doesn’t give the desired outcome, the next thing to try is one party democracy.
Next step: 0 parties!
It’s beyond me that any modern democracy would even allow someone be PM/President for 16 years in the first place, and then allow them to run again. For all that’s fucked with America rn, that one they’ve done right (for now).
How is denying the right of the people to reelect whoever they want to office more democratic than fulfilling their right? Claiming democracy restricting such liberty is somehow more democratic is impressive mental gymnastics. Even with modern democracy the guiding philosophy is to restrict government to promote & protect individual liberty, not undermine liberty of the people.
