this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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The concept that voting for a third-party candidate is somehow "helping" one of the major party candidates is based on the assumption that the third-party candidate's voters would have otherwise voted for one of the major party candidates.
I mean, voting third party in America is functionally not voting. I'll absolutely shit on people for not voting.
It's worse than not voting. Because of the Spoiler Effect, voting 3rd party actually helps your least favorite major candidate.
In vacuum I agree. In the US electoral system voting for a third party is almost the same not voting at all, so it really doesn't matter if you vote for third party or you vote for nobody. My issue is that in the context of America voting third party makes no sense, especially this election. By voting third party you don't care who gets elected and it makes no sense to me because who goes "I don't really care if fascists come into power and start oppressing women and foreigners". Who the fuck is indifferent to fascism? Apparently third party voters.
I appreciate the effort but I'm not American. I simply follow American politics because sadly American politics impacts the rest of the world.
No, it's based on the assumption that they can otherwise vote for one of the major party candidates, which is true.
Yeah it seems some people don't pay attention to the rest of the world when it comes to trivial issues like politics, law, education and healthcare. In Australia we have two major parties, Labor and Liberal. Then the Greens who sway a lot of decisions one way. And the Nationals who go another way. Then a few more representing across the spectrum ideas. They're all still absolute dickheads but some are better than others and I think, looking outward, that it's working better than a two party solution.
It should be noted that whenever examples are brought up of third-party viability, the voting system referenced is almost certainly not FPTP.
Nope, not how it works. You don't need all of them to vote for one of the major parties. It's often only a fraction. Florida 2000 final tally was less than 600 votes difference between Bush and Gore. Less than 1% of Nader's own 97k votes would have needed to flip, and we'd be talking about a very different country right now.
This also applies to a few other states in 2000 that had close votes. Florida wasn't the only story there, and no, neither was the Supreme Court.
Binary thinking strikes again.