MaiOtaku U.S. Election Poll

https://i.ani.me/0278/6749/16010065945051167891772.jpg So this is what the ballot they sent me looked like. @thesailingteacup

Ah, man! JoJo is losing the race! And here I thought people wanted a female president. https://i0.wp.com/themilsource.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/maxresdefault-2-1.jpg

As much as contradicting it would be with my views, I'd vote for JoJo just to break for once that Rep/Dem false dichotomy.

I admit I voted independent last election because I was so dissatisfied with my choices. Lemme tell you, it doesn't feel satisfying throwing your vote away. I don't even think it was enough to make a statement that last election.

I will say that while I definitely sympathise with hating both parties (because I also hate both parties), the system in America right now is very decidedly a two-party race. Now, I get the idea of voting for principles, sure, but electorally the only way to come close to even realising those principles in the long term is to vote for the one of the two parties that is closest to those principles. Principles are very well and good and necessary, but unless they become embodied in reality, they will always be just a personal set of principles, and achieve little in the way of progress. I think it is apparent that Trump is a significant threat to liberal democracy in a way that Biden, as awful as he is, could not even hope to be. I strongly suspect that if Trump does win, the US will become a genuine one-party state. The threat is too great right now to be trying to build up electoral parties outside the dems, IMO. For one, that's a super long-term strategy, and historical attempts at such things have always been mixed at best. Electoral system needs to fundamentally change before alternate parties become viable strategies. If Biden does not get in, Trump does. And the US (and the rest of the world) could *really* do with Trump not getting in. EDIT: Oh, I will also say that merely voting is not enough. In order to get proper change and a Bernie-esque shift again, people need to get involved in the Dems, unions, and in direct action (stuff like volunteering), especially to help communities impacted by Covid-19. Democracy does not end at a ballot box, and I hold no illusions for the sanctity of electoral politics over all other forms of politics; for me a vote is not a moral decision, but a pragmatic one. Vitally important to get a Biden win and then push on the party as far as possible to get more and more concessions from them.

If people want to vote for third party because of some platonic political philosophy that people have in their head. More power to them. But the political reality of third party is different. You voting for a third party isn't changing anything. You are just one vote. One vote is insignificant. It is even much more insignificant if you live in a hard red or hard blue state. It would take millions voting for a third party to actually swing the election towards a third party. How are you going to make millions of people change to a third party? Well, "we gotta start at the grassroots blah, blah, blah." Sounds good on paper. But the applied reality of third party candidates is not the platonic political outcome that people have in their heads.