Some thoughts on our voting system, 3rd party voters, and my internal struggle between my understanding of 3rd party voters frustration, and my red-hot anger at them for splitting the Democratic vote when we have literal *FASCISTS* running within the other party:
Going to start this by saying I literally do despise people that ignore the dangers of the spoiler effect. But I also understand being frustrsted with both parties. I don't like Biden *that much*. I don't hate him, but I'm constantly frustrated by his refusal to be harder on the other side, and play hardball. I'm tired of him doing things that don't work when the other party is literal fascists, and right now we do not need a compromiser, we need a *fighter*. But that being said, we don't have any choice other than him atm, because either Trump or DeSantis will be the Republican nominee in 2024. And a similar situation of milktoast Democrats versus literal Fascist Republicans will be the case in future elections as well. That's just the reality of things. But that doesn't mean I don't have an idea for a solution to the problem. It just means my solution isn't something that we can accomplish by voting 3rd party in the short term.
To start with, while I hate that we have to vote for the lesser of 2 evils, the solution to that is (just to stress that earlier point even more) a bit more complicated than just voting for a 3rd party. Unfortunately it's very hard to overcome the 2 parties in a First Past the Post voting system. There's a lot we need to change, our voting system included (and not just the Electoral College, but *fuck* does that need to go). We need to adopt a Ranked Choice voting system to make it more competitive for 3rd parties, without such a massive risk of creating a spoiler effect.
Problem is, neither of the 2 major parties wants to do so, and voting for a 3rd party has that spoiler effect risk. So what's the solution that's most likely to work? You build support for Ranked Choice inside not just 3rd parties, but even more so inside both major parties, til even the politicians running in said parties can't ignore it. It's a solution that takes longer, but it's a much safer option that's more likely to work, without people risking an Election of 1912 scenario in which someone wins the Presidency that nearly 60 percent of the population doesn't want them to win. People don't want a plan that takes patience, and they want something right now, but that's the only real way to get rid of the 2-party system.
Sure, it's possible for a 3rd party to win elections on a massive scale and end up winning the Presidency, but that always comes after one of the 2 major parties becomes so badly divided that it offshoots into a 3rd party that most of that said major party joins, and also enough of the other major party, and it results in the dissolution and replacement of the first major party. And then the cycle of the 2-party system repeats.
In conclusion: You can't get rid of First Past The Post *permanently* just by voting 3rd party, and more often than not that tactic just backfires in your face. Build support for Ranked Choice within the entire populace on both sides of the aisle and within both major parties til politicians on both sides have no choice but to support it to win their primaries and the parties themselves have to add the adoption of ranked choice to their overall platforms, and it's much more likely to change our voting system to one which favors 3rd parties in the long run. The "lesser of 2 evils" voting will never cease to be a thing unless we get rid of our First Past The Post voting system itself, and what I described above is what I believe to be an actually viable solution.
P.S. I am really not looking to be ganged up on by 3rd party voters and people that *really support* one of the 2 major parties, and will probably turn off notifications on this post (if Tumblr has that feature). This is just a solution that I believe is the only viable one available to us. I realize my wording on despising people that ignore the spoiler effect will make some of you angry, but try to look past that part and think about the logic of my solution itself. Call me an asshole if you want, that's fine, just consider the idea itself too.









