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this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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While I don't completely disagree with what you're saying here, you are far overstating the nature of the primaries. By the time my state's primary rolled around, every single candidate dropped out and endorsed Biden. It's not really much of a vote if there is only one guy to vote for.
The primaries are dog shit and routinely fail to present candidates that accurately reflect the will of the people. People are now calling for Biden to drop out as a result of that.
I'm still voting for Biden for now, but this shit isn't ever going to get better until we have elections that actually capture the will of the people.
They'd represent the will of the people more if the people could be assed to fucking show up to any of them.
That's definitely a contributing factor, but not the only one. The use of FPTP voting, the spread of election days being based on which state you're in, the inherent biases and control the establishment has over it all are IMO bigger factors.
Yeah but no.
Millenials and Gen Z could have swamped the primaries easily by just showing the fuck up even at their share of the voting age population.
Let me rephrase that to help you understand the fucking abdication of civil duty young voters have perpetrated.
They are not even performing to population share never-goddamned-mind the easy overrepresenting share they could hold in primary season if they spent half the energy showing up that they do about who everyone that did chose instead of who they liked.
It's like people think they shouldn't have to participate to achieve their desired outcomes in a participatory democracy.
This is not a disenfranchisement problem, this is a "I don't actually give a fuck but Imma blame dA aStAbLuShMiNt instead of owning up to the consequences of my apathy for all but my own interests" problem.
It would have been a landslide if they fucking showed up. When Bernie needed them most, they told him they had a thing that day.
Young eligible voters owe what they want the bare minimum of showing up when the time comes to be able to influence who's calling the shots on what wants get acted on.
If the orangutan wins and plunges this country into civil war, first thing I'm gonna ask anyone who asks me for help is if they voted, and if they say no and don't have a good reason for it, I'll shoot them in the face for condemning me and everyone like me to hide in shelters like rats for fear of being interred because "guys just trust me the DNC is gonna learn their lesson this time I swear just trust me bro were gonna do revolution by not doing anything bro I swear bro Project 2025 is just shitlib fearmongering bro Dobbs was actually Hillary's fault for not making me want to preserve Roe enough to wait in a line for an afternoon tops just trust me bro."
Crazy, it's almost like we need some sort of change so that people can reliably and easily show up. Maybe we can call it election reform or something.
That, and by the time my state got around to voting, Bernie had dropped out and endorsed Biden. Do you honestly expect young voters to vote for somebody who has explicitly told them to vote for somebody else?
The solution to large scale behavioral problems isn't condescending shouting down towards people to change their behavior. It didn't work with cigarettes, those only fell out of use to the extent that they did after reform/regulation came down. It doesn't work with road safety, people will always speed until the road is designed to make people feel unsafe driving faster than the posted limit. It doesn't work with crime rates, crime will continue to exist until people's needs are met, and that includes healthcare, shelter, food, water, a job with security, the ability to retire, etc.
The solution to large scale behavioral problems is routinely structural change. This problem is no different.
The primaries need to be legally binding so that people have confidence that their vote will be respected. They need to implement voting systems that actually give all candidates a fair chance (especially not looking at you FPTP). They need to hold the primaries on a single day that everybody gets off from work, so that everybody gets a chance to vote for all of the candidates. All campaigns need to equally spend money from a shared pool to run their campaigns so no one campaign gets a monetary advantage. The list of election reforms goes on, but the point is there is a myriad of reasons why our elections are fucking dog shit, which results in a lack of confidence, which further results in a lack of turnout.
Yelling at people to change their behavior will never work.
And what does it take to meet this totally not arbitrary "good reason" in order to not have violence inflicted upon somebody?
Does living in a guaranteed blue state do the trick? What about being brainwashed by your family/media? Quit being so trigger happy, it won't do anybody any good.