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Do you vote?
I wasn't entirely sure where to post this, so change location if need be.
Do you vote in elections, or do you abstain from voting all together?
I'm never sure what to do. The parties you can vote for where I am are Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, UKIP & Green.
Would you vote for a 'lesser evil' to avoid getting left potentially worse off or would you abstain from voting all together and just deal with what you get?
I live in an area that has been dominated by the Conservatives for years. Last time I voted Green.
Some of my friends on the left vote for the party with the most 'liberal' ideas and some just don't vote at all.
How about you?
I always vote (which will probably leave me open to some flak here but oh well.) That is to say, I always go in and leave a mark on a ballot. If there's a party who I feel line up well enough with my politics and I believe are genuinely revolutionaries, I will vote for them. That's an incredibly rare occasion, so what I more normally do is spoil my ballot. Sometimes I just cross everything out or write "no suitable candidate" across the paper, occasionally I'll have a bit more fun.
I do like the thought of writing something for fun all over the ballot, I must say.
I in generally vote and vote for an actual party, but thanks to the dutch electoral system we have better options than you do, even if the most left parties on the ballot made it so bad that I can't vote for the party anymore there are always individual candidates I know personally well enough to support (how can you not vote for your own mom for example). I don't vote because I think reformism helps me, but for the people for who the election outcome can mean the difference between just being poor or actually starving, for who it can mean staying or getting deported, etc.
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here at least We shall be free
I didn't vote in the general election, will vote in the municipal election (Socialist Party of course). The more SP-delegates in legislative bodies, the more able grassroots organising activism is to put pressure on municipal councils and push for reforms. It's purely strategic.
pew pew pew
To me, there are three different scenarios
#1: A revolutionary party/in the best case your own party is running: Vote for them, because even if it's an illusion to think they will achieve anything in parliament, being in there, or even just having a high outcome, will make more people notice them (and maybe even listen).
#2: No revolutionary party is running, but a reformist party that has very good demands (e.g. No to war, free healthcare, free education etc.) is: Vote for them, basically for the same reason as above.
#3: Neither a revolutionary party nor a reformist party with good demands are running: Vote for the most liberal (in the American sense) bourgeois party, because one vote more for them will be one vote less for the Nazis.
Of course, there can be very specific cases where it's better to abstain, but in general I would say: Vote
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." - Karl Marx
"It is more pleasant and useful to go through the "experience of revolution" than to write about it." - V.I. Lenin
Formerly Random_Girl
I show up to vote but I don't have illusions of what it will achieve. Unless it's a particularly interesting and bringing up issues that get ignored here, I don't really care about it. Basically all I usually see here is a Republican (who'll win), a Democrat (who has to convince people s/he's not like those other Democrats), or the lolbertarian nut. Everyonce in a while a Green might appear. I suppose this is the same for most people in the states, with only what party heavily controlling the district changing.
What I don't like is that the voting for state and local offices don't allow for write-ins so I can't do my own way of a "none of the above". More often than not I just submit a blank ballot. It's not a waste of time for me though, takes me about five minutes to do on my way home.
The last election that popped up here was for the mayor and the school board. Officially it is non-partisan so their membership isn't stated but for the most part they were Republican. The two mayoral candidates were both Republican Party members, one getting the support of the "establishment" Republicans and the other the party's county chair who courted tea baggers, the former won in the end. School district chairs were even more opaque but basically boiled down to "I'll spend your money the best!" or backhanded ways of saying "those minorities in the eastern part of the city hog our school resources". Eye rolling moment when I saw with one candidate who bragged about his outreach to Israel.
I don't participate in the choosing of which managers of the bourgeoisie will rule.
"The revolution is the political and economic affair of the totality of the proletarian class. Only the proletariat as a class can lead the revolution to victory. Everything else is superstition, demagogy and political chicanery. The proletariat must be conceived of as a class and its activity for the revolutionary struggle unleashed on the broadest possible basis and in the most extensive framework." - Otto Ruhle
...The Myth of Council Communisms Proudhonism
FKA Subvert and Destroy
Yes, I do, but I have the impression that 3rd party presidential votes are not properly counted and recorded in the USA.
Nevermind there being the Electorial College as another obsticle.
Last year was the first major election I was eligible to vote in, and I did, but I'm not sure if I'll make it a habit. I voted for Vermin Supreme as president, a third party guy who seemed decently progressive for some sort of local office, and the only one of who I voted for who won, the state's first female attorney general, whom I voted for to spite the people who made annoying attack ads against her. Besides that, I mostly wrote in people's dogs or whatever.
The freer the verse, the freer the people.
FOR
BETTER FUTURE
The thing I'm not thrilled about Kathleen Kane is how she is handling that assisted sucide case.
I don't normally bother, but I might in 2015 depending on Labour's position on schools and teachers' pay, just outta self-interest, as it should be. Not that i'm under any illusions about the medium- to long-term under a labour government, but it would just be nice to have a few extra quid in my pocket, the tories will probably have teachers working for minimum wage if they get in again.
I sometimes vote on initiatives and referendums, never for politicians tho.
"I'm anti-Republican and Democratic / if they self destruct that's anti-climactic"
My family is, and have been for generations, hardline liberals of the English variety. Since I was a kid, I can remember the old folks going on about how 'we fought for democracy, and it's a dishonour to take it for granted'. Not showing up at the polls is equated with betraying your country or something. Anyway, for some reason, it's stuck with me.
So, having that ingrained in my head, I always go to the polls,
and I always void my ballot.
i say it as it is, i did and i still do but i do know that it is completly useless and pretty much just a waste of time.
All i want is a Marxist Hunk.
It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces intelligence but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
i don't vote, it only encourages them
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
I live in a state that totally switched to mail-in ballots. So the effort expended is much less. I sit down at the table with a voters guide or two, the ballot and a pencil. Oh and a beer, of course. I am a tactical voter. I choose referendums, candidates that will have the most impact. Or the choice that is most amusing. I live in a safe liberal district (Jim "they fuckin' lost" McDermott's) in a consistently Democratic state. So I have no problem voting third party -- or for Vermin Supreme.
Oh and I am voting for Kshama Sawant for city council. If the Seattle Commune isn't declared the day after her inevitable victory I am going to be very upset.
Voting for me as a completely apolitical act, there is no political goal of anti-capitalism that can be achieved by it. Hence my votes are motivated by pure self interest and whimsy. Chris Christe seems like a good fellow to me, he handled the whole hurricane thing well, talks a good talk and isn't an ideologue and is willing to compromise. Plus the last guy we had was a corrupt sack of shit and since Christe came in the states looking up in the whole not having corrupt sack of shits running the government department. So why not? He's making the state a better place. Not like i really give much of a crap about the electoral circus more than that. Of course this is all based on requirement that I can be bothered to use my day of of work on election day to get off of my ass and vote, which sadly is unlikely because I can think of a billion more productive things to do.
Men vanish from earth leaving behind them the furrows they have ploughed. I see the furrow Lenin left sown with the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty crops for the ages to reap.
~Helen Keller
To despise the enemy strategically is an elementary requirement for a revolutionary. Without the courage to despise the enemy and without daring to win, it will be simply impossible to make revolution and wage a peoples war, let alone to achieve victory. ~Lin Biao
http://commiforum.forumotion.com/
Nope.
Got my shitty mail in ballot and voters guide today from King County. Ill just mark it for Sawant and be done with it. Petit bourgeois crackers better not start resisting that $15/hr min wage...
"Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind ... when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom." Engels
Left: 8.99, Libertarian: 5.84
