this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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I believe the middle ground is to vote a spoiled ballot. Which is to say, vote but leave the entry for the slots with no good candidate blank. Your participation is registered. Your approval of individual candidates is withheld. The message is loud and clear.
However this primarily works in systems where the elections are already fair and equitable, and it is simply a subset of candidates who suck.
The fundamental problem with the US electoral system - particularly wrt the electoral college - is that volume of participation doesn't really matter. I can vote for Trump. I can vote for Biden. I can vote Third Party. I can leave it blank. I can not-vote. Trump is still going to carry my state of Texas, guaranteed.
My support for the winner of the electoral delegates is implicit in residency, it is not a function of my participation at the ballot.
Volume does matter, though. It enough people vote blue in Texas districts, the result goes the other way and overwhelming turnout can even defeat the bias of gerrymandering.
With the EC, the number of votes in any district boils down into just the winner of that district, which I think is what you're saying, but it doesn't negate the activity behind it. Granted, this simplification is problematic still because districts are not the same and it ignores relative district sizes. Votes still matter because we don't know what will actually happen in each race.
Texas is historically a pretty conservative state demographically, so it would not be a surprise for Trump to win there. That's democracy working as it should (despite flaws) to represent as many people as it can. Democracy needs people to participate and give a coordinated equal push towards our goals, and we might be surprised by how different the results could be if we all believed in it and worked together.
Then we'd be California. But we're not. Republicans still beat Dems on registration alone by a good 10-pts.
Combine that with voter caging in red districts and state harassment of voting officials in blue districts, high profile prosecution of black voters, deceptive robocalls, and straight up old fashion voter intimidation at polls, and you get a state that will remain solidly red into the foreseeable future no matter how bright blue Houston, Austin, and Dallas shine.
Even that is predicated on Texas voters continuing to support Democrats, when Democrat elected reps - from Liz Fletcher to Henry Cuellar to Ryan Guillen - drift increasingly right-wing in their politics even as their districts gain liberal votes.
A state that splits 60/40 on an issue, but represents as 100% homogeneous by way of elected representatives, is not "democracy working as it should". It is a deliberate subversion of democracy, for the purposes of limiting enfranchisement and minimizing the influence of minority voting blocs.
Our version of democracy is flawed, yes, I agree. We can talk all day about what is working against us and how it looks like it won't win.
What I'm advocating for, though, is participating despite that. We need learn to work with the system as it is because there's not much time to change it. Election reform, though, is my top priority going into the next presidency.
The system doesn't value your participation when it is run by people who hate you. Ritually pantomiming democracy is something you do for your own anxiety. It has no impact on the outside world.
We need a system within to work. But the current system is actively harming its community. Working in the system means being this guy
Going to shut down these awful casinos with my winnings, as soon as I hit the jackpot.