🎓 Doc Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@qoto.org

@joeinwynnewood

> First, how is voting for a fringe candidate who cannot win anything or accomplish anything any kind of compromise, let alone a good one?

Cause who wins or looses will in no way be effected by your vote. So your vote has no more value if you happened to pick the guy who won or the guy who lost, that outcome is the same regardless.

So since voting for the guy who happens to win accomplished absolutely nothing as well the question is how is voting for a third party candidate, presuming he looses, accomplishing something. Simple, your nudging the percentage points for third parties higher, and the percentage for primary parties lower. This in turn effects botht he calculated (projected) chance of a third party being a challenger int he future, and drives greater support to third parties (as they are harder to write off the higher their percentage points go).

So in short, while voting for a majority candidate absolutely does no good, even if it wins, voting third party **always** does good regardless of if they win.

> Second, explain to me exactly how Kamala Harris represents fascism.

In much the same way the republicans do. With violent exclusionary opposition to even mild criticism of their party. and the fantacism that goes along with that. Combine that with her general support of police and an unwillingness to fix (or even recognize in any meaningful way) the deep rooted issue with police in this country, and combine that with the genocide she supports in palestine the fascism meter is cranked all the way to 11.

@gfjacobs @Burnt_Veggies @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews

@bonifartius @freemo @louis

Yup, and there's no good way to handle "everyone is taking into account how the system works", because if there were, the resulting system would break the Arrow's impossibility theorem.

A colleague of mine btw did write up a computation of that kind for most recent parliamentary elections in Poland, but the point there was mostly to compare voting in different constituencies (you may vote in any constituency in those elections, as long as you actually arrange for that slightly ahead of time and appear in a voting location in that constituency).

@freemo @louis depending on who you ask, yes. it's essentially the same argument as in the US: if you vote for some small party which lands below 5% (which are excluded from the bundestag) you weaken the "good" big parties which aren't AfD so you strengthen AfD who are evil nazis who will end democracy.

always reminds me of the famous osho quote: "Government by the people, of the people, for the people... but the people are retarded."

@freemo @louis believe me, it's a common argument here in germany with more than 5 parties having a substantial vote. if you vote for something else you are "throwing your vote away".

regarding people throwing a fit:
i think what happens is that people identify very strongly with certain parties that criticizing these parties is an attack at their ego. i believe that this happens more for progressive parties, as those often use emotional arguments (like "end of democracy"). at least much more often than conservatives.

@freemo Yeah, that would be a strange way to use it. Autism and ADHD are both under the neurodivergent umbrella, but they're just a small part of it.