• chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    By voting for a third party you’re worse than someone who doesn’t vote, because you use resources that could be directed to literally anything else and be more effective. Taking all that third party campaign to a casino money and betting it all on a double-zero is more responsible use of the money than spending it on a campaign that will serve no purpose but wasting resources and pulling voters from a candidate that may actually win.

    The only excuses to support a third party candidate are being an idiot or a bad actor intentionally trying to spoil the vote. Which one are you?

    • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      What resource am I redirecting?

      What isn’t effective about a third party vote?

      How are third party resources a waste?

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        They have a literal zero percent chance of winning. Hell, most aren’t even on the ballots. Therefore any effort or resources used on their campaign is waste. A vote for them is a waste because it’s impossible for them to win, and that vote could be used to support the better of the 2 major party candidates.

        • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          I think you’d have a good point if winning was all that mattered in an American election.

          Winning isn’t all that votes decide.

          Poll turnout is used to decide ballot access, funding, event presence and of course for the two major parties policy triangulation.

          That’s not even touching the amount of public awareness that will be built by a third party making a strong showing.

          • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            The most famous Democratic Socialist who does the most for the movement and achieves the most for the country is Bernie Sanders.

            Note that he runs on the Democratic ticket in order to stay relevant even though he and the party aren’t always in alignment. And when he didn’t get nominated in 2020 he threw his support behind Biden even though he could have easily run third-party. He knew that running third-party would have guaranteed a Trump victory.

            Ralph Nader ran for the Green party and spoiled the vote when Al Gore - the most famous environmentalist in Washington -was running and handed the election to Bush.

            The GOP doesn’t actually want Trump, but they know 100% that he’d run third party without the nomination and kill the GOP, which is why they back him.

            The spoiler effect is real and, until we have a better system, running or voting third-party is political malfeasance.

            • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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              2 months ago

              You’re mistaken about bush v gore. The Supreme Court gave us bush because gore didn’t want to do a whole state recount (which is what would have been necessary to show that Florida went for him, which it did. the handful of counties they settled on wasn’t enough to change the results by themselves).

              Why are you talking about sanders? He’s not running and if he were I wouldn’t vote for him.

              • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Bush defeated Gore in Florida in the final count by 537 votes.

                Nader received over 97,000 votes. Had he not been in the race, his supporters would have overwhelmingly preferred Gore to Bush. Yeah, some of them would have chosen not to vote. But even if 99%of them had stayed home, that remaining 1% would have been enough to win Gore the state in a manner that would have kept it from ever going to the Supreme Court.

                The Bush administration was a horror show for the US and the world. The economic, diplomatic, environmental, and human cost of it is unimaginable, and people like you are why it happened.

                • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                  2 months ago

                  You are, as I have stated several times, mistaken about bush v gore.

                  Every post-hock review of statewide ballots that I’ve ever heard of has had gore winning by a narrow margin.

                  Just the butterfly ballots alone would have tilted the pre-recount tally in gores favor.

                  Nader didn’t give us bush, the Supreme Court and the weak recount of only a few counties did.

                  Would gore have been significantly different after 9/11? I thought so back then, but now I’m not convinced. The preparations to invade Iraq again were being made during the end of the Clinton administration and there was enough personnel carryover from Clinton to bush that I believe it would have been the same but with different graft.

                  I asked earlier if people like me were more to blame than non voters, than the parties who failed to convince us or even recognize that they needed us and the administrations who actually perpetuated the myriad war crimes of the bush and Obama administrations. Are we?

                  Break it down here, what precise volume of Iraqi blood is on my hands?

                  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    It never would have reached the point where it went to the Courts if Nader hadn’t run and the recounts not occurred. And the recounts that did occur likely would have turned out differently because Bush would have been further behind in the rest of the state’s numbers.

                    Nader gave the Court the opportunity to put their thumb on the scale.