Commented without looking at the instance, turns out I forgot to block ml when switching to piefed. Let’s see how long this stays up lol.
EDIT: Turns out they’re fine with my comment. I should probably be less insulted by that.
My comment text in case you want to copy/paste from it for some reason
It’s not about voting for the lesser evil, but against the worse one. The way the United States is structured, which influences the way its people think about voting and vice versa, you are given only two options when voting for president:
- Vote for the Democrat one
- Vote for the Republican one
But… you might think you’re clever and say “I should just vote for neither of them, nobody will stop me”. If your state has RCV then put your preferred candidate as a first pick and just place Democrat before Republican. Problem solved, no more strategic voting. Unfortunately, precious few states have adopted this for any elections, let alone the presidency.
In states without RCV, there are 3 equivalent cases from your perspective:
- Vote Republican: Increment their number by 1
- Overall effect +1 for Republicans
- Vote Democrat: Increment a threatening score by 1, thereby requiring Republicans to gain 1 more vote to win
- Overall effect -1 for Republicans
- Don’t vote or vote for a non threatening party/candidate
- Overall effect 0 for Republicans
Forgive me for assuming the reader wants to get Republicans (and Republican aligned Democrats) out of office. In this case, it is your responsibility to vote for the most threatening candidate. It’s a sick trick of game theory, which is why RCV is so important.
I get what you’re saying but the Republicans did just remove all funding from USAID and PEPFAR, dooming millions in the global south to death by hunger and disease. And instead they are going for an extractive approach. (I know, like they weren’t already, but the US wants to use hard power everywhere now which is the stupidest idea ever) I got the chance to speak with some USAID veterans and it isn’t pretty. Even in the global South, the United States is losing a lot of favorability because of these cuts. That’s what happens when you cut your soft power agency into pieces It’s a choice between the Shit party and the Shit Lite party, but at least a number of decent people have leverage over the Shit Lite party.
Exactly. ML folks act like voting for someone means supporting them, but in our system of minimal democracy, voting is harm reduction. Primary, protest, call your reps, etc, but when it comes time to vote, pick the candidate that’s across the board merely bad instead of deranged.