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1/3 of the possible voting populace doesn't vote because they are told it won't make a difference, when the last presidential election came down to a few thousand votes. Bugs the hell out of me.
Even if you’re in a non “swing” state, the totals shifting in some new direction will influence it becoming a non swing state over time. It still matters. Both ways.
This was the way the crazy people got abortion banned: They picked something that was crazy out of reach, and kept working for it until it was in reach. Instead of just saying “oh well who cares, it is difficult, I will wait until someone else makes it easy.”
Exactly, the reason it happened is because we became complacent to the point where the only way to win votes for them was to win the craziest sector, they knew everyone else would just keep voting (or not voting). They campaigned constantly because people would froth at the mouth over it and they knew they were single issue voters.
If the 1/3 of the people who don't vote showed up in this election it could actually make a huge difference, hell it could show that the parties need to rethink their entire strategies. They still won't though, but they should.
"Making a difference" and "electing one of two unpopular candidates" don't necessarily go hand in hand.
If the two unpopular candidates were perfectly equal then your argument might have weight, but in my book there's one that's horrible, and one that's not great, but also not horrible.
Politics never has a good candidate, it's always between two bad choices. It's just choosing the best of the two.
Well now you're catching on to why so many people don't even bother. It's almost as if these two parties want it that way so they can maintain their control. Why do you think the Democrats keep picking candidates that either lose or struggle to win against someone like Trump?
I guess in my thinking, if the act of not voting means you are okay with letting the worst candidate win, then by not voting it means I'm okay with a lot of innocent people being hurt by the horrid policies of the worse candidate. By voting for the lesser of two evils, I'm more saying "I don't want that other candidate".
You're trying to say it's their plot to give you two candidates. What if their plot is instead to convince you not to vote, so their bad candidate gets in easier because you could have helped stop it?
What are you helping to stop when both candidates are terrible? You're helping in the same way that "thoughts and prayers" helps people. You're simply participating in a rigged game and thinking that your participation is some sort of moral choice and "doing the right thing" when in reality that feeling is just self-gratification.
If you think you're helping, why does the political landscape continue to devolve and slide further to the right regardless of who wins? Why are more and more people becoming poor and homeless while a handful of companies and individuals are reaping all the rewards? That's the trajectory you're arguing to help maintain here.
Personally the farther left we go, the louder the right gets. To me, I see a losing battle that they're desperately trying to win. They may win temporarily now and again, but overwhelmingly the younger generations are more liberal. It's why we see the desperate grab for power now, they know even with the tricks it's just a matter of time.
And for your first, I stand by what I said. Your assumption is that both candidates are equal, so what's the point. Except from my point of view, one is vastly better than the alternative, so there is a point.
That's like eating shit and lightning yourself on fire instead of just eating shit.
When you compare our choices to eating shit or eating shit and lighting yourself on fire, is it really much of a question why people aren't volunteering to do either of those things?
One is going to be picked for you either way. Not voting doesn't stop the shit eating from happening, just allows the lighting on fire to also happen.
By choosing the less shit option, politicians will see they need to be less shit to get elected, eventually to the point of maybe even having good candidates. Allowing the worst candidate to win tells the politicians they can get worse and still have their coveted power.
This is demonstrably false. After Obama was elected twice we got Trump. Clinton was picked in 2016 and was so terrible that she couldn't beat the orange turd. After her loss they gave us a "status quo" clone of her who barely managed to defeat the orange turd. Now we're faced with the exact same choice and polling shows that it's likely to end up like it did in 2016. Both parties continue to move further and further right regardless of who's getting elected and we're being forced to choose from the same tiny pool of candidates every election even though there are hundreds of millions of people in this country.
When those are the only two options, fuck yeah: Picking nothing is way worse than picking the least bad option. You'll be either the metaphorical shit regardless, why risk worse?
Continuing to vote against the other candidate rather than voting for who you want allows them to keep doing worse and worse because that other party is always going to be there and always considered worse and supporters of that party will look at the other side and do the same. There is zero accountability for either side to the point where both candidates now openly support genocide and you have people arguing that "you're a piece of shit for not supporting them."
By continuing to vocally support eating shit, you're ensuring that in a few elections we'll be supporting eating shit and lighting ourselves on fire because the other side will be eating shit, lighting ourselves on fire, and giving a rim job to a horse. To support our current system is to support a race to the bottom.
People can and should criticize flaws, but to not vote because you don't like either choice solves absolutely nothing, guaranteeing only that things will get worse. Your argument simply does not hold up and you're arguing against something I never claimed.
We should continue to push for and work towards things like ranked choice voting, but letting the worst of the worst win is guaranteed to prevent progress.
“Unpopular” is a pretty carefully chosen criterion there
Damn straight which is why the Dems handed a win to Trump in 2016 and why polling shows that he's likely to win again this year. It takes careful choosing to pick someone that people dislike so much that he can't even win against a bloated orange fascist.