• Rob T Firefly@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    How does a strategic practical vote within the current system perpetuate it any more or less than a throwaway protest vote?

      • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        I’m asking you how, specifically, a protest vote and a strategic vote are any different in terms of perpetuating the shitty system currently in place.

          • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            Who do you feel you’re “showing” anything with a protest vote?

            Protesting in the street works by showing the people in view that you’re there in protest of a thing. However the viewer feels about you, the issue, or the concept of protesting, the fact that you’re there doing it in that moment is public and undeniable. Protest votes, on the other hand, are a blip of mostly-invisible data that just get silently decoupled from the process and filed away once their irrelevance to the result is established. The election system, fucked and in need of reform as it is, has that built-in mechanism for quietly doing nothing in real life with your protest vote, and the system is certainly not going to be subverted or reformed at all by your having done it.

            If that protest vote is the only means by which you’re hoping to accomplish anything on Election Day, I’m still not sure I understand why one would bother.