this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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In all past elections I’ve either not voted or voted third party. I’ve only ever voted for a Democrat (who wasn’t Bernie) in one election which was for local office, the guy was actually pretty solid.
I’ve since decided that I’ll probably be voting dem in 2024. I sort of feel like not voting or voting third party is part of a lingering faith in electoralism that most leftists (myself included) have. Having a dem or a republican in office is an inevitability, and there’s no changing that. Voting third party or not voting materially does nothing since the outcome will be the same. Both parties’ solution to third party voters or non-voters is to just castigate them and then not change their platform except to maybe promise some crumbs that they abandon once in office. Third party votes are hardly even reported on (all grouped together as “other”) and I’ve never seen low voter turnout reported on.
So you could vote major party, vote third party, not vote, we’re all getting the same thing and thats a dem or a republican. To me I’ve come to the conclusion it’s much more useful to choose between two things that actually have a chance of happening and then spend the rest of the time doing actually useful organizing work than to take an action that makes myself feel better but doesn’t affect anything. And as bad as the dems are, I don’t believe it can be argued that they’re worse than the gop. Maybe wrt Ukraine/Russia, but I think all the other horribleness of the gop cancels that out. So gonna probably swallow my pride and vote dem.
Tldr: voting third party or not voting is part of a lingering faith in electoralism, it will change nothing except a bunch of dems will castigate you for it. Choose between the two inevitabilities and spend the rest of your time doing useful work. If you believe in a third party it’d be a better use of your time building up that party and building enough energy around that party that it can actually challenge the dems and gop. At this point there’s no party that can do that. The most energy a third party candidate has had in this country since 2000 was fucking Gary Johnson, and he got like 3% of the vote.