United States | News & Politics

you aren't going to vote to help close the gap

I do vote, I just tend to vote for third parties. The R candidate wins with ~60% of the vote almost every election, so even if every third party voter supported the second-place candidate, the R candidate would still win. So whether I vote D or a third party is immaterial, the results are the same.

Ranked choice voting

Sure, though I personally prefer STAR or Approval Voting (I push for Approval, but prefer STAR). If it comes up as a ballot measure, I'll vote for it. If a candidate runs on that as a platform, I'll vote for them. But AFAIK, nobody in my state pushes for it in their campaign, and they submit a bill every few years that doesn't go anywhere because there's not a lot of energy behind it. We had a pilot program with RCV (which I supported), but again, it didn't go anywhere.

So yes, I absolutely want an alternative to FPTP.

If I really wanted to get involved more, I'd run for office to raise awareness, and I probably wouldn't run on the D ticket (I'm not a Democrat, more of a left-leaning Libertarian, and that honestly probably has a better chance in my area). But I have young kids and a full-time job, so that's just not feasible at this point. But I do want to run against my state rep because that seat has been unopposed for as long as I've lived here (~10 years now). I don't expect much to happen though, since fed seats usually go to the R candidate with >70% of the vote, and anywhere I'd actually want to live is similar (the only blue areas are downtown or in resort-y areas).

consider the power that you could have in helping to close that gap

Yeah, I plan to get more involved once my kids get more independent.

But the fact of the matter is, my individual ballot does not matter so I vote my conscience instead of for the lesser of two evils. I hope that small effort shows someone in my State Legislature that interest in third parties is enough to warrant looking into voting reform.