I don’t expect elections to deliver the result I want, I want my vote to count
Although a lot of the other points deserve (more?) attention, I just want to share this because I never thought how hard this would feel.
I’m in my early 30s and come from a very apolitical family. About 1.5 months ago I voted for the first time in my life. At an embassy in the fraudulent Russian election.
Of course I knew my vote would not count. I always knew that every Russian election since I was a kid was a fraud. I did it for a statement and to partake in an event that resembled a demonstration, to do the limited thing I can do. But I would have never imagined that feeling that would hit me once I had actually voted.
After standing in line and passing the security checkpoints and ruining the bulletin (which in theory should count as a vote against everyone in the percentages). Once it was done. I was… furious, enraged, desperate. Much more than I thought. On a rational level I knew my vote didn’t matter. The results were already calculated no matter what. Even before I got in line. No matter whether I had smuggled in my non erasable pen or not. But once I had actually voted for the first time, I didn’t want anything more than this vote to count. Not to win, just for someone to acknowledge that bulletin. I felt so angry and helpless and I wanted to scream until my lungs would start to bleed.
So, yes, this freaking matters. I hope none of you will ever feel this way after voting. And for the love of God, if you have a passport of a country who has somewhat fair elections, please go vote.
I want more than this. I want a single person in LA’s vote to count as much as a single person in Oklahoma. Right now, they don’t; because of the electoral college, people in densely populated states’ votes count for less in the general election than those in the bible belt.
I think your comment distracts from the point of theirs, but we’re already here, so: the bigger issue is single seat representation and “choose one” voting. Single seat means that no matter who wins, a large fraction of the population won’t have representation. Who do you go to if you’re a Democrat but the Republican won? Choose one voting means the voters can’t support everyone they like. There are lots of ways to fix these problems, but I like Sequential Proportional Approval Voting with 5 winners per district. It’s impossible to submit an invalid ballot, and the voting technique can be easily applied to single seat positions like mayor. With 5 members per district, plus the decay property of the counting method, trying to gerrymander the map is functionally impossible and it’s highly likely any given voter will have someone in office who is willing to listen.
Well, yeah. Changing from FPTP would be huge, and it’s necessary to deal with the strategic voting issue, but we also have to get rid of the electoral college. Majority rule, popular vote winner wins. Then we get approval, ranked choice, or literally almost anything but FPTP and things start to look sane.
Who do you go to if you’re a Democrat but the Republican won?
You mean your vote? At the risk of misunderstanding you, your vote goes into the Popular bucket with everyone else’s, and whoever wins that vote wins. Why does it need to be more complicated than that? The voting itself can be more nuanced than FPTP, but ultimately there’s (ideally) a mostly-Condorcet winner, and that’s the winner.
I suspect you’re thinking more about Congress than the single-seat Presidency, where There Can Be Only One. Or I’m utterly missing your point. That’s easily possible. Give me three choices of topics, and I’ll rank them in the order I think we’re discussing.
PS, I tacked on to their comment because it was specifically about the second-to-last point, wanting their vote to count. I thought it fell a little short as it didn’t address the fact that, if your live in a metropolis, odds are your votes mean less that others in rural environments. I hear you focusing on better proportional representation - anarchists getting a seat, however small, at the table with the Big Parties. I was focusing obviously on the fact that we do not have equal representation by virtue of 70 Oklahoman votes having as much weight as 100 Californian votes (I made those ratios up; I don’t know the exact proportion).
Yes sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear. I meant after the winner is found and is in office. If you’re a Democrat and the Republican is in office, you can talk to them about your concerns, but they’re unlikely to care that much since you’ve got very different opinions. With elections where there can only be one (E.G. mayor) this can’t be solved, but legislative districts can and should have multiple representatives.
But yes, I agree, fixing the electoral college is also important!
Thanks man. There’s too many people on this site telling one not to vote because of cocked up ideas of what america is and isn’t. It may be a flawed democracy, but at least it’s a democracy. I hope you live to see your vote count someday too
Thank you, I hope so too. The good thing about autocratic regimes is that they tend to die with their leaders, and Putin isn’t going to live forever. It’s a small consolation when you look at all the lives that are lost meanwhile, along with millions of people’s lives being destroyed and their futures taken.
And yes, America’s voting system is awful. But ffs please go vote. It’s something. It’s not great but it is something. It isn’t nothing.
Thank you for writing this, I’m glad to read it
Your country will get better with more people like you, I hope it happens in your life time.
Thank you. I also hope it will. It surely will.
But once I had actually voted for the first time, I didn’t want anything more than this vote to count. Not to win, just for someone to acknowledge that bulletin. I felt so angry and helpless and I wanted to scream until my lungs would start to bleed.
I feel the same way after voting in Texas. Different method for caging and disenfranchising voters, but the outcomes are functionally the same.
I don’t think presuming my vote will be traunched and kettled and rendered meaningless through statistical manipulation feels any better simply because I know it will be counted. Its still a rigged game. The outcomes are overwhelmingly predetermined.
What I want more than anything is for my city of Houston to go its own way. To be independent of the corrupt cesspool of bigotry and fear that dominates the capital building. I don’t want to simply be counted in the minority. I want my independence.
Your vote is not just counted, but even meaningful. Shenaningans in Texas try to affect the outcome by playing with things to control the odds and making it more difficult for “the wrong people” to vote. It’s really an entirely different scale.
Texas Conservatives are manipulating the vote with “legal” actions and can only affect percentages. A likely result is very different than a predetermined result. A “legal” manipulation is subject to at least some checks and balances and can be changed, which is very different from something that can just be dictated by those in power
do you know anyone who’d choose joe biden? like honestly, if there was a better option?
do you know anyohe who’d choose Donald trump, other than brainwashed fanatical cultists who literally worship him?
over 60% of Americans, and even a majority of republicans, want, according to polls: single payer or otherwise socialized healthcare-no more insurance, federally legal cannabis, abortion access. I suspect the numbers are similar for: tax the rich, net neutrality (once explained), do something about climate change, stop all the bridges collapsing, gimme public transit(maybe), and ‘don’t give the military obscenely expensive shit they’ve literally said they can’t use’, maybe also ‘stop cops killing randos in their homes while they sleep what the fuck’.
weird how none of that is happening and we have the precise opposite being done on most of that.
its not the same, you need to pretend more, but for me, sitting here? its not different enough that I can really throw stones.
Texas Conservatives are manipulating the vote with “legal” actions and can only affect percentages.
It goes beyond that.
PoC districts often get voting machines that don’t work. Urban districts will have large pools of ballots that go uncounted because of deliberate delays in the vote count (similar to what Republicans managed in 2000 with the Brooks Brothers Riot). Judges remove candidates from the ballot for arbitrary reasons (Tom DeLay would routinely run uncontested because his opponents’ petitions to fill would get “lost” or “misfiled’” by the country clerk).
This is only legal in so far as local allied politicians allow it to be.
almost like direct (action) democracy is the only thing that matters and all this bullshit is just tricks to tell us we already said our piece and were overruled, so we need to shut up and just do what most people want, which everyone agrees is a bunch of dumb and bad things if you ask them or look at polls.
from California, and I fucking feel you.
Send Gruesome Newsome my regards.
I’d rather send mine, after what he’s advocating doing to unhoused people, but I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn and I know it.
I already can guess it was Sunday and it was noon. Noon against Putin.
Exactly. It’s great to hear that other people have taken notice of Noon Against Putin! So far I haven’t met anyone on the internet or anyone apart from those who came to Berlin.
But I admit we got in line at 8:10 because we came from another city and we had an impatient toddler with us. This way we were done voting at 9:10. When we returned at noon, it was an insane line. Unfortunately our acquaintances who came at 11:30 didn’t get to vote before the embassy closed down. The embassy had created an impressive bottleneck with the security checks and cloakroom. But they stood in line until the end.
Not that surprising if you open my profile.
Also youtube comment section counts as meeting on the internet. I’m pretty sure you opened at least one ACF/Navalny/Navalny Live/Popular Politics video in last… Year already?
True, your profile is also a gold mine for new communities to add, so thanks for that!
As for the youtube comment section - that’s a valid point. I however never have written a youtube comment in my life, so I am not sure this outside perspective counts as “meeting”.
which in theory should count as a vote against everyone in the percentages
Only if ruined in correct way: more than one boxes are ticked. Or no ticks, but we all know who will receive vote in this case.
Yeah I would not choose to leave all the boxes unticked.
in from California. its not quite as bad, but the electoral college means my vote is ~ 1/5-1/500th (depending on the specific thing) of someone in Missouri’s vote (constitution said slaves count as 3/5), and the states presidential votes (where mine matters most; the 1/5th place) always count for whoever the blues run, even if I hate the bastard; my vote literally gets thrown away. first election I remember, 2000; they did count them, then appointed the loser after his friends threw a fit.
also, good job getting out. wish you luck.
the only times i feel my vote counts is for local legislation. I don’t think my vote for people ever counted and I’ve been voting since 2000.
Number 1 is hitting super fucking hard currently, not just with healthcare but science. I’m so fucking angry to see year after year after year NASA gets a budget cut and the fucking military gets yet another massive increase…
It’s to the point now that NASA had to decide what currently running missions to cancel not just what future missions are now unfeasible… Chandra X-ray telescope is the only one we have and the entire global X-ray science community relies on it… We’re now forced to give it the axe so we can shovel more money at Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin…
My entire life this is all I’ve ever seen. More military, less science. More military, no healthcare.
and nobody fucking wants it but the billionaires! its great.
direct action or nothing.
Even 30% for housing is pushing it and based on lending limits instead of quality of life. Somewhere between 20-25% would be more reasonable.
It’s based on budgeting theory, that you should avoid rent/mortgage payments taking up more than 30% of your income.
Granted these budget theorists also state you should be putting 10/15% to investments, which may be true theoretically, but is not in any way practical for many misfortuned folks.
Yeah, I was gonna say. At 30% you better be paying off your own house.
i actually do want corporations to be unprofitable. profit is theft, not viability.
not really. a small profit accounts for the risk and work involved in obtaining it. Problem is to often its way outsized and if not the secondary objective is massive loss for the public sector to shoulder.
yes really.
accounts for the risk
what risk? the risk of losing control of the business and becoming a laborer just like you and me?
no the risk of losing money. are you talking a system where money does not exist as a means of trade?
nice straw man im just gonna ignore that.
turns out that the ultra wealthy losing 99% of their money is actually not going to hurt them nearly as much as you or i losing even 25% of our savings.
calling that “risk” is like saying i took a “risk” walking outside without an umbrella today, and using the fact that i got wet as an excuse to firehose like 800 other people.
moving further into nuance, i do believe that investment should be rewarded when successful under capitalism. we probably agree on this point.
however, “rewards” in the form of long term fuck-you-money profit hundreds to thousands of times the magnitude of the non-owning laborer at the expense of those who built the business with their lives, is unacceptable and outright theft.
you know at first I thought you were way wack but I did reread and you did say corporations and I was looking it at more generally. ie. owning a business. that being said what I was arguing really was your last line about profit being theft which as a generality is wrong but yeah large corporations making obscene profit is wrong.
bruh okay 🗿 🤝 i guess
yeah, while there is crossover, profit is not the same thing as meet and appropriate compensation for investment. profit is strictly defined as revenue minus costs. businesses that pocket huge sums of profit in the form of executive compensation or stock buybacks are evidence that costs are far too low, that there is theft of cash that should rightfully be reinvested to the creators of that revenue value, that is, the laborers.
you have some other weird definitions of what being a corporation means going on, but it’s not altogether important to my point so i’ll leave us at this weird fortunate agreement lol.
What risk? That a Capitalist may become a Worker like everyone else?
no the risk of losing money. are you talking a system where money does not exist as a means of trade?
If a Capitalist loses money, they risk becoming a Worker like everyone else.
if a worker loses money they risk becoming a poorer worker. is the worked paid? do they have money? what level of money makes one a capitalist? in your world. I had someone else come along with similar concerns but they seemed to just be talking about corporations which I kinda get then but commerce happens on all levels.
Workers work for wages, Capitalists recieve profits off of ownership. This isn’t “my” world, this is the world.
so workers do not own anything they make profit off of? Like a car they use to do uber rides? in this world. that is what you think? you think that is reality?
Fuckin y’all bootlickers downvoting this fuckin forgot you’re closer to the gutter than the bank pick a fucking side
the propoganda is real.
CEO pay soared 1,209.2% since 1978 compared with a 15.3% rise in typical workers’ pay but hey that seems totally fair and proportional to the work done 👅🥾
That’s a different meme.
Just to be clear. I don’t want the Soviet Union. I want workers co-ops to be the default form of employment followed by government employees, and a small portion of unionized companies with private ownership and self employed folks to fill in the gaps here and there with an understanding that over time the unions will buy out the private owners of their shares.
I don’t want the Soviet Union. I want workers co-ops to be the default form of employment followed by government employees
So you don’t want a Soviet Union. You just want a… an elected local, district, or national council of workers to control the economy… but, like, a bunch of them in a kind of amalgamated political body?
with an understanding that over time the unions will buy out the private owners of their shares.
Damn. Nobody tell this guy about Lenin’s NEP.
Yes, I want what the Soviet Union claimed they wanted not what they got. You know, like any syndicalist worth her salt.
I’m not claiming that communism is bad, I’m saying that over centralization in the hands of a single party has done more harm to communism than MLs would like to believe.
one could argue that the Russian revolution failed after they beat back the white army when the Bolsheviks killed all the communists, because killing communists is all the USSR ever really did, except the one time it killed communists by grinding Nazis into a fine icy paste with them, which admittedly was pretty cool.
one could also argue that theres math about centralization that shows you necessarily get worse information to a central source, even with 0 inefficiency, because physical limits and compression and junk, and that a highly centralized body literally cannot make good decisions on purpose at that kind of scale. but then the tankies would stop cuddling their body pillows long enough to threaten to kill you.
If you could provide a non-crackpot reference to said math, I would be much obliged.
Ah but anarchism can’t work! Nobody with a back so weak to knives could ever form a stable society. /s
The Bolsheviks handed spain to Franco by utilizing the same strategy they used in the Russian civil war, ally with the anarchists and syndicalists right up until they’re sure they’ll win then kill everyone who isn’t on board with Bolshevism. We’ve learned our lesson, you don’t succeed by dying for the revolution, you succeed by making the people who will stop you die for it.
So to the neo-Bolsheviks, how about y’all put your books down and march in front of the other communists for once. Don’t worry, we’ve learned how to do logistics from running mutual aid networks, leftist print shops, unions, etc.
oh dont try to cite history personal experience or math at them; that’s idealist, doing your revolution in the pneuma (if any of them knew enough history of philosophy to know what that is)
Yes, I want what the Soviet Union claimed they wanted not what they got.
The original USSR was predicated on peaceful coexistence with European neighbors. Lenin’s climb to power came on the back of an enormous anti-war movement, protesting the catastrophic loss of life during WW1.
What they got, instead, was a western sponsored counter-revolution via the White Terror, followed by a decade of border wars, and climaxing in a Second World War thanks to an unprompted invasion by Germany. By the time the wars were over and a lasting (abet tense) peace had been brokered with western nations, the Khrushchev Era of the USSR largely was this.
Workers soviets prospered immensely during the 60s and 70s. The Soviet block finally got to taste the fruits of the industrial revolution, complete with cheap nuclear power and high speed mass transit and surplus agricultural produce thanks to industrial fertilizers. Quality of life in the USSR easily rivaled western peers in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. And their exports spared populations from Bangladesh to Cuba to Cambodia to Korea from engineered famines.
I’m saying that over centralization in the hands of a single party has done more harm to communism than MLs would like to believe.
I would argue feuding partisan factions in western states have done more to harm than anything a unified worker’s government has ever inflicted.
What good is a two-party system when each party claims the other is going to end democracy if their rival wins?
basically the thing Russia had before the Bolsheviks killed all the communists, the thing they promised. just listened to a six part podcast on this if you want a link.
the thing Russia had before the Bolsheviks killed all the communists
Google “Anton Denikin” and then get back to me about who killed the communists.
Eh, I think corporations should be banned. Make everything individual and worker co-ops. These huge businesses and huge governments do more damage than good.
also, as an actual radical:
yeah pretty spot on with healthcare. this is basic ‘having a society’ shit.
I don’t want a job that pays so much as an actual society I can contribute to and nurture and be a fucking part of that will take care of me some noticeable fraction of how I take care of it. I’d rather not have money involved, if its all the same to you.
I do actually want a free place to live. I’ll help build it or whatever, but I’m fucking done compromising with landlord parasites; watched too many of their victims die.
I do not want corporations to be unprofitable; I want them dismantled and their boards executed. worker co-ops are cool. individual enterprise is cool. no more exploitation, no more not having a voice.
I think the entire concept we have of ‘democracy’ is absolutely cucked. I could write some essays on what real democracy looks like, but the short version is: fuck your bourgoise elections.
kill the billionaires; tjwyre literal monsters who
drink children’s bloodsteal and transfuse the blood of the young to grasp vainly at eternal youth while burning our futures. no problem with your party yacht if its green and you built it with your friends, but I think we need a reset on ‘wealth’.Glad I was not the only one who was reading these points and questioning why the fuck wouldn’t I be fighting for free healthcare and housing. These aren’t impossible goals.
these are incredibly basic ‘minimum first world country’ shit.
most peripheral (‘third world’)countries have at least half of these. a few manage all of them, albeit with a much lower standard of medical care, because they don’t have things like reliable electricity.
these are incredibly moderate, even conservative ideas, and the only systems they could possibly disrupt are the most rabidly unselfconsciously exploitative. if you’re against any of these; you’re anti civilization.
I don’t want my money for nothing; I want a job that pays for my basic needs
Nah fuck that. We live in a time where technology allows for universal material luxury and plenty of time off. If you’re working, you deserve both to have your basic needs met and luxuries.
yeah. we’ve been creating more and more eficiences, or so every single tucking source has told me; through technology, economies of scale, and expertise. just like non fucking stop for the past 200 years.
so if we’re working at least as much as people did 200 years ago, some heads need to fucking roll.
I don’t want money for nothing music starts playing
I want my MTV
I want my DJ Sugar C
really obscure reference nobody will get
Back to Reddit you go, kiddo.
p.s. Save y’all a click: the reference points to a trolly edgelord with delusions of musical stardom that hates on furries & trans folx for the lols. In short: a whingy fuckpuddle.
p.s. Save y’all a click: the reference points to a trolly edgelord with delusions of musical stardom that hates on furries & trans folx for the lols. In short: a whingy fuckpuddle.
huh? Well if that’s the case that’s very unfortunate. I thought it was just a song commenting on why people buy his shitty music when they don’t get anything in return.
I want everyone to be given what they need to live comfortably so they don’t get so fucking pissed off about the glaring unfairness of the world that they do a bunch of antisocial shit to cope.
This is great - it’s high time we set the framing straight, just like this. For far too long public discourse has defaulted to conservative framing of issues, and it’s only served to drag the Overton window right. I agree with other commenters that things are more nuanced, but the least we can do is begin discussions from a more left-leaning frame of mind.
This all began almost a half-century ago, when conservatives began pouring billions of dollars into researching language and ideas. They wanted to ensure that they would forever dominate political discourse in the USA by making words mean what they wanted them to mean.
I agree that framing is important. For example, I don’t support new taxes or making drugs legal.
I DO support repealing tax cuts and repealing cannabis prohibition.
Still, I suspect that conservatives oppose many of these things regardless of framing, due to an “I got mine” mindset. The trick is to frame these issues in a way that appeals to their self interest.
For example, instead of “universal healthcare is the right thing to do for the dignity of our population”, we need to frame it as “universal healthcare will save taxpayers money”.
lol nobody cares about n’taxpayer money’ and conservatives haven’t been a real thing in decades. stop pretending to be in honest dialogue with them; they font exist, you just see Nazis wearing their skin
Yeah you have a point I struggle whenever I want to describe my political opposition. Sometimes I want to write Republicans but then there are people who claim to be independent or libertarian so then I write conservatives but in reality the Republicans don’t uphold any conservative values such as small government, fiscal responsibility, etc. So I think I’ve settled on the term regressive. You’re either progressive or regressive and regressives are holding us back from moving forward. I think fascists could work too but so many Trump supporters just don’t understand that they’re being fascists.
yeah the people who are just, like, ‘leave me the fuck alone as much as possible, I’ll leave you alone as much as possible, and if we have to get together, we do it as close to equals as possible’ are all a particular narrowish band (in the signal sense) of anarchists.
radical lefties who the republican party does nooooot like. who nobody in power likes.
that same sensibility that was honestly about ‘balanced budgets’ in the 50s is now, like, solarpunk (because it doesn’t take two eyes these days to see money is totally disconnected from reality, but sustainability and stability are still nice) and necessarily anti authoritarian. they just abandoned all their virtues, and somebody had to pick them up, so…
conservatives haven’t been a real thing in decades.
Sure they have. We call them Democrats.
I’d argue they’re still pretty faschy. or at least pre-faschy, like paint primer.
this shit is really moderate and centrist, not even left. just, like ‘I want a society and to not be exploited’.
Sad that I no longer agree with this. I’ve become so radical. Socialism or barbarism. I won’t be happy until every landlord is in prison.
While a lot of these would be extremely nice, if Capitalism remains so will Imperialism, and so will exploitation and a further eroding of the safety net as wages stagnate with respect to productivity.
I want everything that’s written in black letters.
Needs more jpeg
I just wanna be happy.
Justice is important independently of happiness
but me too bro
I want the government to server the people. NOT the corporations and churches. Keep your religion to yourself and tax churches. (at least the bullshit big ones)
When it comes to tax exemptions for religion, I’m in favor of removing them all.
Religions should be treated as non-profits, if they don’t want to pay taxes they need to file paperwork that shows the money is being used for expenses or charitable purposes, and there should be transparency to ensure that if they’re doing shady shit like sending donated money to Italy or paying pastors millions or buying private jets, then at least that information is public.
honestly in most places this would be sufficient, but in america I think we need to just ban it all for a few decades first.
Make them legally split into two entities - one that does the religious stuff and one that does the charitable stuff. The latter is a non-profit and can be treated like any other charity. The former should be taxed like any other corporation. The religious side can of course donate to the non-profit and get the accompanying tax break for charitable donation if it wants, but then that funding has to be used for charitable purposes.
Keep your outdated superstition to yourself, and tax or abolish churches.
There, FTFY
