politics

With a tip of the keyboard to a certain someone who has blocked me and won't see this (a shame really):

Since many in this community have a habit of resorting to personal attacks when responding to posts recently, I’ll say this: I support and respect everyone’s right to vote for who they want to. Just as I support the ability of anyone to point out to someone the consequences of their actions. ;)

I’m just posting this article that’s already available on a much bigger platform than Lemmy—I didn’t write it, just sharing it for discussion.

Putin’s Jizz Stein wants Nato disbanded, the US to give up their SC veto, and revoke weapons to help Ukraine defend itself while simultaneously forcing ‘peace’ (subjugation) negotiations with russia.

For those that don’t understand how the Electoral College + FPTP voting works, voting for her means helping donald become president due to the spoiler effect.

2015 Stein breaking bread with Putin, his senior staff, and Mike Flynn (later Trump's national security advisor

I'd also like to point out something I've heard way too much lately:

maybe democrats should run on some of the policies that are overwhelmingly popular instead so there’s no room on the left for someone to run.

I've heard probably a dozen variations of this statement by now.

The spoiler effect is the result of geometric distance between candidates, not the strength of policy positions. If anybody tells you that the democrats should just do X, unless X is switching the country over to approval/star/rcv, or some other system that is more representative, they don't know what they're talking about.

Here is an example using a randomly generated set of voters and candidates. The first election is just two candidates, the second election is identical, but with an extra 3rd candidate

Total voters: 765
The winner was favorable to 56% of voters
lachlan - 427
emma - 338

Total voters: 765
The winner was favorable to 44% of voters
emma - 338
lachlan - 312
omalley - 115

Any party, any candidate can fall victim to this, no matter how strong or inspirational they are. This is simply the result of everybody voting for the candidate closest to them.

A good electoral system will not have the results changed by an irrelevant candidate. But our current systems are vulnerable to this, and it is disastrous for the state of our country.

Democrats should combat this by advocating for ranked choice or approval choice voting which is a fairer voting system and won't allow for "spoilers"