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I am so so divided on if I should vote for biden or not. I wanna vote third party to at least do something or should I just stay home and protest and advocate where I can? Thoughts?
Yes we should let the worst people in power because the other option isn't perfect, the axis had a lot of issues during ww2 so we should have just let the Nazis win.
Until your system does anything useful with third party votes or couch-sitting, you go out and vote every time for whatever does the least damage to democracy. But don't disengage from the political world after the election. Between elections, you work to change the system. Find groups that tries to do this and volunteer. If you really care about it, you will need to dedicate your time to the cause, even though it might seem hopeless and may very well be.
I understand your situation sucks and you are tempted to say "Fuck the status quo" and desperately do something different in hopes that something will somehow change. But you know who do go out and vote, every fucking time? The racist assholes who would love to see Trump and his fascists cronies in power. And if that happens, it is game over. You will never get any chance to change anything, except from after a big traumatic event such as a big war ("civil" or otherwise).
Do what you want and don't be guilted by fear-mongerers on social media. If you want to vote third party, you should.
America (and alot of countries to be fair) need ranked choice voting systems so damn badly for this exact reason (if you're unfamiliar with it, a simple version is that basically you rank your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd pick, your first pick gets 3 points, 2nd pick 2 points, 3rd pick 1 point. At the end they tally up the points, and the party with the most wins).
Singular vote systems trend naturally towards 2 party systems often, whereas with a ranked choice system, far right people would vote for far-right-person that loads of people hate, far left people would vote for far-left-person that loads of people hate, but since almost everyone would put moderate-person as their 2nd choice that everyone kind of doesn't like, they would be the one to get elected in this case. It's like the old saying, a good compromise is when nobody is happy. That's what's needed to move away from extremist politics, but without a ranked choice system, it's not going to happen any time soon.
*this is grossly simplified, and there are examples of multi-party systems that don't use ranked choice, and there's many many caveats besides when talking so simply about something as complex as electoral politics, but the fundamental point stands.
Vote your conscience. Vote third party if you can't stand the Democrats no more. Vote Democrat if the Republicans winning is too much for you to handle. Which ever let's you sleep best at night is the correct answer.
Vote Democrat if the Republicans winning is too much for you to handle.
The Republicans winning should be too much for anybody with a conscience to handle.
I don't know what the rules are in the US regarding a protest vote, but that's what I do in the UK as long as the candidates I have to choose from (local or general) all make my skin crawl. If you don't represent my interests, you don't get my vote, and neither red nor blue team even pretend to care about people like me at this point, so:
https://www.votenone.org.uk/protest_votes_count.html
Oh, and just to pre-empt any "you're why people like Trump get in", no you. The system is literally designed this way -
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
Please make what you can to avoid trump coming back. Please. Edit I understand the indecision but the situation is dire, if trump goes back to office the US is going into feudalism