Jill Stein is a bad actor in this election, she understands how the electoral college works and she understands she's weakening the democratic party position. But let's not blame shift - the Democrats could be much better on climate change then they are today and if they were better Stein's BS wouldn't have such an easy time attracting voters. I dislike the title posing it as "Stein may hand Trump the whitehouse again."
Even if the argument about getting X% of votes was true, the states to campaign heavy in would be the deep blue/red states. Especially since they tend to get ignored by candidates.
Instead she sticks to the states where <30k votes could decide the election and the market is saturated with the most expensive ad costs
the states to campaign heavy in would be the deep blue/red states.
Agreed. If a third party pulls off a major change in one of these states, it's still likely to go for it's color regardless so the presidential outcome is not affected, but it'd force the relevant parties to examine why the third party was able to make such huge inroads and what of their own policies that they should change.
It’s blantantly obvious what’s she’s doing.
But for posterity I'll state it; she's spoiling for a GOP win.
No I think the point is that of course she campaigns in swing states cause she wants to get to 5% of the vote so she can get access to more money. But it's the same stayes everyone is paying attention too.
Its false logic to say she's only dangerous in those states cause they are already close and we just have to pay extra attention to them because they are the swing states.
Its false logic to say she’s only dangerous in those states cause they are already close and we just have to pay extra attention to them because they are the swing states.
The 5% can come from Cali alone and not effect the race tho.
And it would be cheaper because of less competition for ads, the voters there are often ignored and would more receptive, and there are way more voters who are left of the Dem.party there
If she is honestly trying to do what she says, then she is doing it in the least efficient way possible and has been for a very long time.
If what she's really doing is trying to hand Republicans the election, then she seems to have put a lot of thought into the best possible way to do it and is focusing on that.
So take your pick:
She's honest but a terrible leader and absolutely dog shit at planning.
She's a liar but either her or her handlers have put a lot of thought into how to get trump elected.
Just an aside, this person thinks that the green party should just get 5% of the national population to vote for them from a single state and that it wouldn't change anything or cause any ripples.
5% of the US population is about 18 million people.
17 million voted in the state of California in total in 2020.
Remember everyone. Basic math isn't just a thing your teacher thought would be important for no reason. It does have use in the real world.
She would have to get over 5% in California for it to count at a federal level and there is of course the fact that it's a wealthy Democratic party stronghold so they actually might spend hard to punish her for trying to take votes. I mean look at all the lawsuits filed to keep Green Party off ballot elsewhere.
I don't see a situation where she is let to just campaign cause we can already see the response when she just gets her normal voters.
I don't think she's smart. She's been searching for something that makes her feel important ever since she realized she hated working and saying out loud the obvious broken stuff even though she doesn't have plans to fix it gets her attention and more money.
She got giddy that she was talked about in Russia because she thinks it's awesome people know her...
Don't assume malice where stupidity is an option first.
Yeah she's a sucky leader that stole the green party for herself and uses it as a piggy bank and self morality boost but she gets the people by being not the Democrats or Republicans. Do other people try to take advantage of that? Hell yeah. I bet one of her advisors probably embezzles funds to pay themselves more. Lots of people are shitty in different ways. This is hoping for an easy answer to the world being a mess. Same way people hope their is aliens secretly running things.
When they talk about the 5% line, it's the national vote, not in each state...
Just 5 percent of the national vote for the Green Party Stein/Baraka ticket can be a true game-changer for American politics. It will qualify the Green Party for recognition as an official national party, and for federal funding in the 2020 presidential race proportional to the amount of votes received — at least $8 million to $10 million
Yes you have to get 5% national so 5% of california is not 5% of the total populace and campaigning in places with low population is pointless since that would give a fraction of a percent for national level.
You pointed out your own flaw with her focusing on just California. Asking her to get 20 million votes in one state would absolutely make the DNC do everything to stop her.
And then you ignored conversation. So why even comment here at all? You don't want a conversation you just want to already be right. It's insanity.
Battleground states are that because it's where the big cities are, thus, you know the people she needs to vote for her. You have like non-concept of cause and effect and are operating entirely on random bad logic.
You pointed out your own flaw with her focusing on just California. Asking her to get 20 million votes in one state
Wow, yes. California has just under 40 million, so that would turn California Green!
would absolutely make the DNC do everything to stop her.
Which would include understanding her policies and why they were so effective in pulling voters away, and if any policies should be considered for DNC adoption.
So, a good thing.
Battleground states are that because it’s where the big cities are, thus, you know the people she needs to vote for her. You have like non-concept of cause and effect and are operating entirely on random bad logic.
To me this was sound logic. Getting all votes from California to hit the nationwide 5% doesn't make sense and would be very tough to achieve and could throw the race (in a new way - by denying the electoral votes of California to Harris).
However, it'd still be cheaper to campaign in such solid states like California, Texas, and New York. Assume Stein wins 5 million in NY and TX and 10 million in CA for a total of 20. It's a tough feat, but doesn't affect the election, but it's big enough that the two big parties have to pay attention and adopt her policies. Also, since these are not battleground states, it's cheaper to win over.
If anything, because battleground states tend to be smaller, it's even harder to make up the raw numbers by winning them over.
The Green Party is not going to win. The only message that voting for Jill Stein will send to the Democratic party is they need to move more to the center to get more reliable voters. It's already heppening. Harris doesn't like fracking but she's not going to ban it and she has to talk about increase US oil production to get votes from people she knows will turn up and won't flake out and vote green or be uncommitted or whatever.
If she wins she will be more inclined to fulfill promises made to the people who actually voted for her. Sure she'll need to represent everyone, but there'll be far more people that voted GOP she'll need to represent (and entice to maybe vote for her in the next election) than green party voters.
I think that Hillary Clinton showed us the opposite. If the Democratic candidate goes too close to the center, they risk losing the left, and they deserve to lose the left at that point. If the Democrats had tried to put a halfway decent strategy together about Israel, there would be zero worry about a third party. And I don't like single issue voters, but if I had to pick a single issue, genocide would be at the top of the list.
"Genocide is a single issue" is basically "I've tuned out the screaming so how can you hear it?"
Back in 2004 when we bombed countries it was considered murder and bad. Bush then normalized it with "You just love 9/11, commie!", Obama continued it, Trump expanded it, and now Biden helped to normalize it.
If the Democrats conform to Iranian disinformation campaigns about Israel, how would they be any different from Republicans that conform to Russian disinformation campaigns about Ukraine?
Voting isn't public so how the hell does everyone keep assuming we know who voted for her at the election?
The people that didn't vote for her didn't vote for her.
You can't claim she didn't get the trump republican voters so it's an indicator she needs to move to the left, right? Or Libertarian party?
Its weird false logic based on feelings about justifying a truly tiny group of people voting green as villians. the main base of Kamalas voters should also be Democrats who shouldn't pander and frack just cause she needed an extra 2% at the polls. We are gonna shift further right for that and more Republicans instead of going for any undecided first?
Perhaps, but I'd feel a lot better knowing I was able to vote for my fringe nutjob without handing their fringe nutjob the Whitehouse. And if my fringe nutjob lost, then I could still keep voting for who I truly believe is best. And by the time all my fringe nutjobs were eliminated, and I had to vote for a Democrat again, I'd at least know that we truly and democratically came to that answer. I don't have to be "right" about the best candidate, but I hate casting a damage control vote that feels like a lie.
So as it stands, I hate voting, I hate having to vote for Democrats, and I just suck it up and do it anyway because we don't have the time to collectively push for a better option.
Plus, if everyone could vote for their fringe nutjob without fear of giving the election to the worst possible option, we might find out that more people support ideas outside of the two party system. Maybe even shifting the Overton window and opening the door for a more representative electorate.
This might surprise some people, but I actually agree with this. I'd love to take a risk on a Green or Socialist or even Libertarian candidate without risking throwing my vote away to the Republican. I'd still not do it with Presidents (the Electoral College fucks you over there), but I'm voting for RCV this November and look forward to eventually being able to not just vote for the lesser evil, nor have to vote for the crook because the other option in that election is a literal fascist...
Maybe those grifters should run for lower offices first instead of wasting peoples’ time and money on un-winnable elections that are entirely beholden to what congress’ makeup ends up being.
Maybe, but since you don't know who my personal nutjobs are, maybe your assumptions are fundamentally flawed? Maybe they have run for lower office? Maybe they have won elections? Maybe they aren't grifters, but concerned citizens who truly want to make a difference in the best way they know how? Maybe assuming someone is falling for grifters is a bit unfair?
Or maybe I was taken in by a grifter all along and would still benefit from Ranked Choice Voting so I don't throw away my vote and let Trump back in the Whitehouse? Either way it's an improvement.
Fwiw, my personal nutjob is Bernie, and even if he didn't win, I consider the shift he made in American politics to have value in its own right.
I think these guys would leave the Dems unranked. I suspect they'd even rank Republicans over them, with the amount of "hate Dems" they got going.
Americans as a whole are dumb. Expecting them to use RCV like it should be used is like expecting a pigeon to play chess. We know what actually happens when you try to play chess with a pigeon.
Run off voting would give the honest guy the greatest chance at winning. There would be no strategic voting, just voting for the one who best represents you, and a bare minimum contingency.
There's a lot of misinformation about RCV, claims that just aren't supported in reality. And one of those is false claims is that RCV is in any way good for third parties.
At it's core, RCV is just a series of First Past the Post mini elections on a single ballot.
There's a lot of misinformation about cereal, claims that just aren't supported in reality. And one of those false claims is that you can just put cereal in a bowl with milk in it.
At it's core, cereal is just a series of very small, crunchy loaves of bread, in a single bowl.
Ordinal voting systems cannot support third parties due to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.
I don't get why RCV proponents constantly lie about it. But then again, it doesn't actually fix the problems present in First Past the Post, because at its core, Ranked Choice is First Past the Post, just repeated a bunch on a single ballot.
That leads to some odd situations where you can actually decrease support for your preferred candidate to help them win.
How that one works is if you have A, B, and C, with the election normally being a contest of B and C, C voters can strategically boost A until B is knocked out of the election. Then B votes get redistributed, with a percentage going to C, so that C now wins.
All because C lowered their first round support a bit, while demonizing A among B voters.
This same sort of mechanism has resulted in odd candidates winning real world elections. Like the Burlington, Vermont Mayoral Race of 2009.
Also, if you add more candidates to the ballot, this sort of attack becomes easier, not harder.
Then there's Ballot Exhaustion. This is where your ballot no longer has any viable candidate left to transfer votes to. But here's the kicker, your ballot can be gutted down the middle before your vote can transfer. If you have A, B, C, D, and E, on your ballot and B, C, D, and E, get eliminated before A, your vote gets thrown away. Even if transferring it to B, C, D, or E would have had them win. It doesn't matter at all, because the rules of the system so that those candidates are out.
Even if literally every single voter puts B as their second choice, with no other candidates reaching that magic 50% in the first round, B is eliminated.
And about that magic 50%. It's not 50% of the initial vote, it's 50% of the ballots that are left in that round. So with Ballot Exhaustion sometimes reaching as much as 18% of all ballots cast, you can have a winner who is only supported by 41% of the population. Or rather, 41% of the voters in that election.
Let's see, other red flags... RCV needs to be counted in a centralized location, so you have to transport the ballots. That adds to the time that counting takes, and adds security issues. Makes it very easy for the people counting to steal an election.
Then there's the complexity of the count itself. That has caused problems, like the wrong candidate being sworn in, because the people counting screwed up.
Overall, the system is actually a step backwards from what we have, and gets in the way of actual election reform, because people say "we already tried that, and it made things worse".
The actual reform needs to be a Cardinal voting system, Like Approval or STAR. Cardinal voting systems actually live up to the promise, and allow third parties to grow and flourish without punishing voters for wanting something different.
Online trolls from the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency used social media to promote Stein’s candidacy during the 2016 campaign, according to an indictment brought by special counsel Robert Mueller against the Russian organization and 13 of its employees. The Russians’ pro-Stein efforts included paid advertisements on Facebook that explicitly encouraged Americans to vote for Stein, according to the indictment.
A summation of the report’s findings on “comprehensive anti-Hillary Clinton operations” said while the group’s assumed Twitter personas had some pro-Clinton content, “the developed Left-wing Twitter personas were still largely anti-Clinton and expressed pro-Bernie Sanders and pro-Jill Stein sentiments.”
Likewise, the report said “pro-Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein content” were among the group’s go-to themes across other platforms.
The tactics and strategies that the Kremlin directed included every major social media platform you can think of — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter — and a few you’d never suspect, including Pinterest, LinkedIn and 4Chan. The hashtags alone tell the story— #MAGA #TrumpTrain #Hillary4Prison #ZombieHillary #SickHillary. Along with anti-Clinton stories, they also pushed out messages against Trump’s primary rivals like Sen. Ted Cruz and former Gov. Jeb Bush. Once in the general election, they pumped up third-party candidates to siphon support away from Clinton with posts including, “A vote for Jill Stein is not a wasted vote.”
And trump is in Israel's too. He's in every pocket with a pocket book. You know he'll give israel everything they want and then some. I wouldn't be surprised at another Kent state over this if he gets elected.