I know it sounds like I’m feeding into some Doomer vibe, or like I’m giving up. I’m not, I will absolutely continue going to food drives and joining the occasional protest if I can, but my serious question I’ve been kinda struggling with is whether registration for voting is even worth it? I mean in my area there aren’t really 3rd parties, just a bunch of Jackass Democrats and Greedy Republicans yelling about how they’re more American. I suppose there are some referendums, but nothing that really helps people especially. I remember in 2016(I was a lib) I had told a friend that not voting creates a more dangerous situation for POC and LGBTQIA people that we know personally. The fucked up thing about what I said is that it kinda ignores the sad reality that Democrats often toss aside these groups as sacrifices for a few more votes. So Idk how to proceed. My potential vote for a Dem governor will make me feel worse than when I voted for Biden bc I know better. I can tell myself that I genuinely didn’t know better when I voted for Biden, I was a Dem who was willing to do anything to beat the Far Right, and I got what I wanted, just not what I expected. Sorry for the long Body Text, but as a USA comrade in a strongly Blue State, is voting worth anything? Thank you.
The national clown show should take up a very small fraction of your legitimate consideration imo.
But feel free to gum up the local scene. And if your orgs allies have a certain way to vote then do that.
I know voting feels worthless, but it’s necessary to ensure that the system can represent us. Even “deep blue” places are often only like 65% blue - we’re really all a shade of purple. As for breaking out of this oppressive duopoly of Democrats and Republicans, you could start volunteering for https://starvoting.org/ and/or https://represent.us/…
What gives you the impression that the system has ever represented regular people?
Alternative voting systems do not fix the problem. Plenty of capitalist dictatorship countries like australia use ranked choice voting, and that has not stopped them from genociding aboriginal peoples. It can’t even get their cities decent internet speeds lol.
I’ve studied alternative voting systems a lot (even made a website that lets you compare about 2 dozen of them at once). I’d love for us to switch to an Approval system. But if there’s one thing I’ve concluded from studying them it’s that you can’t fix a system of exploitation through “reform” without directly addressing the underlying power structures. I do believe these systems can help us break the duopoly, but, if anything, smaller parties can be even more susceptible to corporate takeover
