A new poll suggests that Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is drawing more voters from former President Donald Trump than from Vice President Kamala Harris.
According to a Noble Predictive Insights survey released last week, Harris holds a narrow lead over Trump in a hypothetical three-way race. With Stein on the ballot, Harris' lead expands, pointing to a potential spoiler effect similar to what many Democrats blamed Stein for doing to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
For Trump, the emergence of Stein as a potential spoiler may be a critical factor in battleground states, where even a small shift in votes could determine the outcome. For Harris, Stein's candidacy could paradoxically provide an unexpected advantage, drawing votes from Trump and narrowing his pathway to victory.
Cripes. My point was our current system means your vote for the perfect candidate can put the candidate you disagree with most into office when one with much closer views to yours could have been elected instead. It has happened, and in a place where it really shouldn't have.
That system should be changed for that reason, and until it is you should be very aware of unintended consequences of that vote.
So now that you've identified the problem I can only hope you're actively building grassroots support to replace the current system instead of just posting online about how people should vote blue no matter what, right?
I see lots of problems in the world. Our voting system is flawed, income inequality is bananas, people still think Donald Trump won the election 4 years ago, our cities are very car-dependent, and plenty more. If I built a grassroots program for every issue I point out to every yahoo on the Internet, I wouldn't have time to change my toddler's diaper. If my posting online tells people to keep the cart behind the horse or reconsider their points of view (glad you seem to agree with me what the problem is!) I'll call that a win on a smaller scale.
I understand juggling the current political hellscape with a child is nightmarish but building a movement behind a better political system would be the first step in allowing people to vote for better options and resolve the myriad of issues you've listed - until then saying to "keep the cart behind the horse" only means we'll continue bickering in the backseat while the obviously broken two-party state drives us all off the edge.
And I get that between work and family finding time to be politically active can be challenging but I would hope you can find an hour or two a month to join your local RCV advocacy group and help create a better political environment for yours and everybody else's children.