Even Bernie didn't vote third party when it counted.

Under no circumstances should anyone with a functioning brain consider this as a good idea. It’s a sacrificed vote. A worthless ceremonial attempt to “protest” by casting a vote for someone that has a barely above zero chance to win.

It’s nothing more that pageantry and it’s irresponsible.

And there is probably no one that would in good faith, ask you vote for this person that isn’t trying to siphon votes from Harris.

DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE.

It's bold of you to assume everyone who would vote 3rd party would otherwise "vote blue no matter who". Also, not everyone lives in a swing state.
- No ones vote should be wasted, regardless of who you're voting for. Vote for the person with the highest likelihood to win, with the closest platform that you could potentially get on with.
  If its hard, write a pro/con of the two possible winners, and then choose who has the least cons for you personally.
  Congrats, you now have part of a voting plan, and you'll have a affectual vote .
  
  No ones vote should be wasted
  Glad to hear of your new found efforts to pass state level electoral reform and do away with the First-past-the-post voting system that is source of what you call "vote wasting".
  
  Id love for that to be the way it happens. Sadly that's down to local elections, but I can promise you Trump won't give you that
Votes aren’t sacrificed, they’re cast and counted. The count is public so you know they aren’t tossed into a pit after their hearts are carved out with an obsidian knife or burned on a stake or whatever.
I think the description of pageantry probably isn’t one to invoke when we’re staring down the barrel of three weeks of constant detailed media coverage focused on every detail.
I also think it’s pretty vile to describe voting for a party opposed to genocide as irresponsible. Irresponsible to whomst exactly?
A vote isn’t ceremonial or protest (and if it were protest it would be a lot cooler!).
I just want to take a minute to examine the protest vote rhetoric for a second. People only deploy it to imply that a vote they name protest is not valuable, not effective, immature and other pejoratives.
Why would anyone listen to the input of a person who looked at the history of the last twenty years or even the last century and not just thought “yeah, that’s immature, ineffective and worthless” but then tried to convince the people who are voting third party, overwhelmingly young people, of it?
I am literally asking anyone who would vote for either of the two major parties or a third party to consider the party for socialism and liberation in good faith. I don’t care who it siphons votes from. If a party thinks they need third party voters then they can adopt third party platforms.
- I don’t care who it siphons votes from.
  This obvious admission of entitlement says everything about how you have nothing to lose in this election, and therefore have no one’s best interest in mind aside from your own.
  That is of course if we are to even assume that you aren’t here to support a spoiler and disrupt an election.
  
  You’re creating a strawman of me to argue against.
  It’s pretty clearly in bad faith. Why not actually respond to anything else I said instead of quoting one short sentence outside of any context and building a bunch of assumptions around it?
  It’s laughable to suggest that my vote against genocide has no one’s best interest in mind but my own.
  Your claim that I’m speaking from a place of privilege and entitlement also falls pretty flat when it’s the high and privileged place of entitlement that’s defined by rejecting genocide.
  Why not try a different line of reasoning.
  
  Because there is no reasoning with you. There never was, and there never will be. You all make sure of that when you refuse to argue in good faith. So to counter- I’m not here to reason with you, I’m here to ensure people reading along can see the foolishness in your ideology.
  And based on the ratios- it seems to me that they do.
  
  From your perspective what would constitute a good faith argument for me to make?
  I’ve tried to be civil and respectful even when I’m being treated with veiled insults and direct baseless accusations even when you finally end up appealing to your viewpoints popularity.
  Doesn’t this seem a little beyond parody to you?
  
  Again, I’m not here to reason with you, I’m here to ensure people reading along can see the foolishness in your ideology.
  Save the false civility. I’m not buying it.
  
  So my civility is false, nothing I say is in good faith and you’re just here for the laughs.
  what is my ideology?

Gloria La Riva, PSL’s 2020 presidential candidate, got a total of 85,623 nationally.

Do you think Claudia de la Cruz will beat that?

Does she have a path to presidency?

Harris or Trump will win and to think anyone else has a chance at this stage of the game is delusional.

She can win if you vote for her.
Really, I think you’d have a really good point if winning were all that mattered.
Election turnout is used to determine all kinds of stuff like funding, ballot presence, event eligibility, media coverage and it does a lot for public awareness.
Plenty of consultants, analysts and workers from the two major parties themselves examine third party turnout when triangulating their platforms and policies.
I don’t think the idea that only candidates who are already in a position to win the presidency should be considered is a very good tack. It’s really hard to defend, relies on some easily disproven misconceptions about the electoral system and if you succeed it just drives people who would vote away from voting at all.
Maybe try a different line of reasoning?
- The time to show support for third parties was months ago. Not less than a month from an election
  No one in good faith remains to support any third party. It’s mathematically and empirically known there no third party has a remote chance to ever win at this point.
  You appear to me- to be here in bad faith and only in bad faith to disrupt an election.
  
  "Support 3rd parties all you want except when it's time to vote"
  "Democracy is voting for my guy"
  
  Oh the time to work towards the change I want to see in my country is months ago? Back then people were saying it was years ago. Years ago people were telling me the same as you, I should have been at it months ago.
  I’ve been doing the same thing that whole time.
  The best time to support party for socialism and liberation was months ago, the second best time is now.
  I explained in my comment that you replied to how there’s so much more than winning to take into account. Surely you aren’t just gonna accuse me of bad faith actions after you ignore my ideas? That would almost be like arguing in img_megamind.jpg bad faith.
- Wouldn’t it make more sense to vote for the better of the two presidential nominees then vote all PSL down ballot where they can make real change?
  Why wouldn’t that work?
  
  If I cared more about supporting the democrat or republican policies than about building an alternative, yes.
  Of course, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to support republican or democrat policies and don’t trust the democrats to do what they campaign on almost a decade and a half ago, so personally I would never do that.
  And I’m here voicing support for a third party which has a platform wildly different than the republicans and democrats so it’s pretty clear I don’t want to support republican and democrat policies at all.
  
  then vote all PSL down ballot where they can make real change? Why wouldn’t that work?
  You kind of clumsily skipped over the main question here.
  
  I promise you I didn’t.
  I don’t want to support republican or democrat policies.
  Voting for a candidate who is running at the head of either of those parties tickets would be supporting their policies and platforms.
  So no, that wouldn’t work.
  Don’t worry, I’m gonna vote party for socialism and liberation wherever I can on the ballot too and my distaste for the two major parties softens the more localized the race is, both because the outcomes at stake are unique and the candidates are less doctrinaire.
  But no, I’m not gonna vote for a democrat or republican for president but then put the party for socialism and liberation in downticket.
  E: wait a minute, if you really thought the down ballot races were what mattered wouldn’t you be positing that I vote democrat at the local level?
  What gives? Which one matters, president or everything underneath it?
  
  To address your edit, both the republican and democrat parties are already built.
  Have been for a couple years.
  
  As I said above, I have no interest in supporting republican or democrat policies. The existence and age of genocidal options doesn’t change my aversion to them.
  
  Again, you’re skipping the question and throwing out meaningless catchphrases.
  Why would I want to build parties that are already built when my goal is to topple the existing ones and replace them with ones that are younger and hungrier for change?
  Farting in the wind by voting a third party presidential candidate isn’t going to do that.
  
  I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here but i directly answered why I wouldn’t vote for a democrat at the top of the ticket. Because I don’t support their policy positions.
  What are the meaningless catchphrases?
  What did you mean by your sentence in the middle there about building parties? I read it a few different times but couldn’t tell what you were trying to say.
  As I said before, way up at the top of our replies, there are real effects that come from voting for a third party candidate, although I appreciate the phrasing given out usernames.
  
  But that isn’t building a party.
  That’s like building a skyscraper by putting together the top floor first.
  
  I just told you explicitly that I’m going to vote for party for socialism and liberation in every race they’re running a candidate in.
  Wouldn’t wouldn’t not voting for their presidential candidate be like not putting a roof on your skyscraper?
  And I don’t fault you for not catching my edit, but what’s the deal with claiming that the non presidential stuff is what really matters? If that’s true then why do you care who I cast a ballot for in the presidential race?
  
  I already responded to that, you edited your comment after I replied.
  
  I just saw, no harm meant by it :)

Just say you want Trump to win. No need to hide it.

Why would I say that? I’m literally advocating people support a party running against trump.
- It’s pretty safe to say everyone is aware of what you’re advocating for here.
  
  I’ve made it abundantly clear, I want people to vote for the party for socialism and liberation no matter what political party they might have been planning on voting for.
  Greens? They’re empty triangulators, vote psl instead.
  Republicans? They’re the vile servants of capital who have no intent to disentangle America from foreign wars. Vote psl instead.
  Democrats? Also the disgusting servants of capital who have no intent to stop the genocide, vote psl instead.
  
  I'm sure lemmy.ml will be able to do what nobody has been able to do in the 200+ year history of the US and make third parties relevant! Great job! /s
  The meme is that you're supposed to try to improve the system in between elections, not just throw away your vote every 4 years and call it a day
  
  If third parties aren’t relevant then who cares if people vote for them?
  I agree that people shouldn’t just throw in the towel and vote for one of the two major parties when they’ve been working so hard in the non election years to build a workers state.
  
  Might wanna change your tactics then, bud. Your work doesn't seem to be paying off. The US has never been further from a worker state.
  
  Psl does represent a change in tactics I think. Their focus on organizing normal people instead of grabbing at the reins of power held by liberals or hyper focusing on campuses is different from the communist organizations of olde.
  
  The PSL is a joke. Everyone knows this. They’re not even on the ballot in many states and need to be write-ins. Suggesting anyone vote for their dumb shit within mere weeks of an election is absolutely as bat-shit bad faith as it gets.
  You know damn well they cannot win. It’s mathematically impossible. Yet you’re still pushing that garbage. Oh, wait. You actually want them to gain traction? Let’s say for a second that I even believe you. So let’s say you truly want them to win. Here’s what you do:
  You vote for who has the chance to win, them you do the hard work over next three and a half years of helping your chosen candidates gain the attention they need to be viable- Cavas, town halls, all that shit. And if they happen to lose again- which they will…
  do it again. And again, and again.
  But to expect and ask people to vote for two complete nobodies that just show up at the eleventh hour with little to no effective roadmap to any legitimate policy- and fleece votes away from the one person that actually has a chance to defeat a man who has said he intends to turn the military against his own people?
  Seriously … what the ever-loving fuck, man?
  
  I don’t think the thing about the ballots has been true for a while. I didn’t pay attention to it because I’m not “in it to win it” as you might condense the position, but there’s only eight states in which they’re not either on the ballot or have the official write in seal of approval.
  So, they actually could win! It’s not mathematically impossible I don’t think. Barring faithless electors, but that might cut a little too close to the bone of actually recognizing that our votes are largely meaningless under a system which is designed to keep the majority from power…
  I have been doing the work. Not always for psl, both because I’ve been doing it longer than they existed as a party on my own radar and because I’ve developed from a disillusioned liberal into a communist over that time, but for at least sixteen years I’ve been politically active outside of elections and concurrent with them at a level so local it blurs the line between political praxis and just helping your neighbors.
  I am not expecting people to vote psl. Psl isn’t expecting people to vote psl! The party itself treats the electoral campaign as a base building operation rather than a way to take power and a way to heighten the contradictions.
  I also think an end to genocide is a legitimate policy. This tea though…
  It might not be best to bring up turning the military against Americans as an indictment and motivator against trump. People might remember the military cracking anti-genocide protester heads under Biden and say “hey, wait just a minute!”
  There’s two things I’m noticing this election season, and I’m not trying to hang the first thing around your head although you can wear the second one with pride:
  There’s a strong undercurrent of fascist collaboration a-la niemollers famous poem. It doesn’t matter if the military are out there fighting anti genocide protesters, liberals would never be at the anti-genocide protest.
  Everyone except for my people and my supporters are a foreign op, a plant, a secret member of the other major party, a spoiler or just acting in bad faith! This is a real bummer because it means that not just is it harder to talk to people because you gotta build trust for two days before they’ll entertain the possibility that you might have a real commitment to the ideas you’re talking about but also that the person to person connections that a communist society is predicated upon are breaking down even more.
  If we can’t trust, respect and understand each other, how can we ever live in a society free of borders and hierarchy?
  
  Why aren't you trying to improve the system between elections? It's clear you understand the flaws of First past the post voting. Why haven't you been doing something about the spoiler effect you are so very concerned with?
  
  How do you know I'm not?