Some people out there seem to be confused, but I always vote in every local and every national election for every office and every ballot initiative since I was 18 years old. Some of my greatest civil rights heroes have fought and died so that we can all vote and I honor their memory in the ballot box every single time.
To some of us, especially those of us like myself who have been scheduling secretaries for US senators, it often seems like a morally reprehensible choice between compromised corporate Democrats and fascist-minded Republicans. Where I live in California, I have the luxury of voting my conscience for president for third-party candidates that better align with my ideas of justice and equality.
But in any and every contested race, as my mom Mary Morello always said, we have to fight the fascist every which way we can, recognizing that even if there’s but an inch of difference between two candidates, there are a lot of vulnerable people who could be greatly harmed in that inch. So vote your ass off, but don’t just exercise your right to vote. Exercise your right to fight for, organize for, struggle for, and manifest the kind of world you’d like to really see without compromise and without apologies before, during, and after election day. And let’s stop the fascists every which way we can. Power the people.
So, it’s ok to promote spoilers, as long as you’re in an area where it won’t have any impact on the outcome?
You get how that still has the overall effect of legitimizing their role in other areas, right? You’re basically doing unpaid advertising for the opposition, and proving that this strategy is effective…while doing literally nothing to benefit your own position.
Which is exactly what 3rd parties are for in the US. At best, they are entirely ineffective. At worse, they help the opposition to maintain power.
At best they’re an indication of a demographic that wants a change that isn’t the other major party, signalling to the party that they might benefit from pivoting at least a little in that direction. That signal is usually ignored, of course, but we are talking about “at best”.
You’re assuming they represent a genuine alternative to the two major parties. What I’m saying is that they are a manufactured alternative, intended to dilute the opposition vote.
Jill Stein and several other Green party representatives all but admitted that this was the case during the 2024 election. They knew they had no chance of winning, and their stated intention was only to make sure the Democrats lost.
I’m making no such assumption. Even if the third party is acting in extremely bad faith my statement holds up just as well.