Yet another one who doesn’t understand primaries or getting better candidates on the ballot of a major party.
Not believing this one simple trick: confirmed.
Reality is not all rainbows & butterflies.
Systems operate according to rules we don’t control no matter how much we stubbornly refuse to accept them until we work the system to change it.
Denying the system exists doesn’t change it.
Fact: the US voting system (plurality voting) lacks the sincere favorite criterion[1].
Fact: that means strategy exists to optimize outcomes, and not following it with protest(-non)-voting can functionally help elect the candidate you like least, directly backfire, and cause worse real-world outcomes for your own values.
Fact: that means lesser-evil voting is necessary in close, high-stakes races to minimize losses.
Voting in a way that backfires has real-world consequences.
Denying it is like denying the consequences of pulling the trigger when a loaded gun is aimed at your nuts.
If you have to vote for the only viable candidate who will realistically refrain from pulling the trigger & don’t (in a cute little protest), then you’re still getting nuts blown off.
Protest(-non)-voting to blast your nuts off every time doesn’t lead anywhere.
There are viable ways to reform the system: lobby legislation with enough organization & support, elect your candidates to other offices (local, congressional, etc) to build popular support, get your candidate to run as a major party in national partisan races, vote lesser-evil in national partisan elections until your candidate is on the ballot as a major party.
Anything else is blasting yourself in the nuts.
Worse, it’s blasting off your neighbors’ nuts & ovaries, too.
Your neighbors don’t want to vote lesser-evil either, but they’re not stupid enough to pretend that other moves won’t blast off their nuts.
It’s straightforward mathematics: plurality voting violates independence of irrelevant alternatives, majority loser criterion, independence of clones.
There is, therefore, a simple way to affect the outcome of a plurality election in your favour without having to convince anyone else to support you. If you introduce a clone of an opponent then the vote for your opponent may split between your opponent and their clone, meaning that you require fewer votes to win. In practice, this fact is well known and some people in British elections do not vote for their preferred candidate because they do not want to split the vote against the party they dislike.
Yet another one who doesn’t understand primaries or getting better candidates on the ballot of a major party. Not believing this one simple trick: confirmed.
Reality is not all rainbows & butterflies. Systems operate according to rules we don’t control no matter how much we stubbornly refuse to accept them until we work the system to change it. Denying the system exists doesn’t change it.
Fact: the US voting system (plurality voting) lacks the sincere favorite criterion[1]. Fact: that means strategy exists to optimize outcomes, and not following it with protest(-non)-voting can functionally help elect the candidate you like least, directly backfire, and cause worse real-world outcomes for your own values. Fact: that means lesser-evil voting is necessary in close, high-stakes races to minimize losses.
Voting in a way that backfires has real-world consequences. Denying it is like denying the consequences of pulling the trigger when a loaded gun is aimed at your nuts. If you have to vote for the only viable candidate who will realistically refrain from pulling the trigger & don’t (in a cute little protest), then you’re still getting nuts blown off. Protest(-non)-voting to blast your nuts off every time doesn’t lead anywhere.
There are viable ways to reform the system: lobby legislation with enough organization & support, elect your candidates to other offices (local, congressional, etc) to build popular support, get your candidate to run as a major party in national partisan races, vote lesser-evil in national partisan elections until your candidate is on the ballot as a major party.
Anything else is blasting yourself in the nuts. Worse, it’s blasting off your neighbors’ nuts & ovaries, too. Your neighbors don’t want to vote lesser-evil either, but they’re not stupid enough to pretend that other moves won’t blast off their nuts.
It’s straightforward mathematics: plurality voting violates independence of irrelevant alternatives, majority loser criterion, independence of clones.
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