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this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Stop thinking that you vote "for" someone in a FPTP system. You don't. You vote against the guy you don't like.
It sucks, and I hate it, but don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise. We're playing a badly-designed game with a shitty controller and we're only allowed to press a button once a year at best.
Think Twitch Plays Pokemon, but with a lot more trolls and no moderation. There will be a constant stream of people voting to do something stupid and destructive, so you spend all of your time voting against them.
Oh, and their votes count for more, so they can win even if there's fewer of them. All we can ever hope to do is try to stop them and hope they don't fuck everything up and give themselves even more power before the next time we're allowed to pick a move.
Yay America. Greatest democracy in the world right there.
That's an early-stage FPTP system. After a bunch of people with minority support start winning you end up with two options, and you vote against the one you hate least because there's not really a choice anymore.
Both Democrats and Republicans have a vested interest in keeping the system as it is. They won't change it unless citizens make them change it.
Honestly I'm kind of losing hope that it's even possible at this point.
Positive change in the American system usually comes from the bottom up. If you're interested in fixing the system, the first step is to switch your local elections to Approval Voting, probably through a referendum. There's a whole bunch of reasons, and lots of second and third steps, but that's the first one.
Whenever people come up with these solutions I'm reminded that it took Jon Stewart over a decade to get money for 9/11 first responders.
If it takes that long to do something so universally desired, it's going to take a thousand years to change our voting system.
But it's nice to dream.
Things never seem to change, until they do. And then you're amazed they were ever the old way at all. As someone who remembers walking through an airport pre-9/11, in a state that put Ann Richards in the governor's office, its funny to think about what was "normal" 30 years ago. Hell, its funny to think about what was normal 20 years ago, under Bush. Or 10 years ago, under Obama.
I'm old enough to remember when a black President was telling the country he could settle race tensions between a Harvard Professor and a city cop by having a beer with them.
Flying planes into buildings probably won't help change our voting system.
Historically speaking, I have to disagree. One of the most transformative moments of our history since Pearl Harbor. It gave birth to wave after wave of right-wing election wins and a subsequent hard-right shift in voting rights, election policy, and court composition.
They'll send a fucking SWAT team to the house of any citizen tries to change it.
At some point, "we just need to vote for the most right-wing Democrat and then blame the leftists any time we lose" is not a productive long term strategy.
What if I don't like any of them?
I would simply not participate in a system that sounds this miserable and tedious. I would play a game that's more productive and enjoyable.
But it doesn't matter, because casting a vote for Ralph Nader from my bright red state of Texas is still the reason Al Gore lost Florida in a 5-4 SCOTUS decision.
Join the club.
That's not possible. We voted on what game we're playing and we glued the cartridge into the console. Much to my disappointment we don't get to change the game, or not play, or even ignore it.
It's a stupid world and we all live in it.
Exactly: The system is built to let them win as much as possible. You're not going to ever beat it. It's like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy except even more frustrating and without the pleasant voiceovers.
That's very possible. It's just not what Americans are used to doing.
That's a naive perspective, as it misses the historical, financial, and sociological roots of the game. You can't play a game of basketball if the other team picks up the ball and walks off the court.
This is Lockean Theory 101, and its the entire basis of democracy. We use democratic tools to divine popular intent. But when the democracy is subverted and political leadership is divorced from public sentiment, the institutions fail. But if institutions aren't failing because people are too afraid to withdraw their support from them, the system is implicitly endorsed and corrupt officials get to continue abusing their social mandates.
Its only as stupid as we make it. Atm, we've got a country that's invested an enormous amount of time, energy, and labor hours in infesting our senior population with brain worms. That needs to change and simply voting isn't going to be the thing that does it.