I vote in every election I can. I have never had my vote for president actually matter or count.

My state has a site where I can look up my name and see which elections I’ve voted in.

• My first election was Gore Bush with the hanging chads, my vote had gotten thrown out.

• I was unable to vote in the next 2 elections because I was in jail both times. Not for anything that would remove my voting rights, just illegal botany.

• The second time Obama ran I couldn’t vote because the voting location had been moved the day before and I didn’t get to the new location in time.

• At this point I had become quite jaded with the election system. So for the dumpster fire of 2016 I did a write in and wrote “any bum off the street”.

• Realizing my vote may have helped bring about the worst, for the next election I took great care to ensure I voted correctly. The state voter lookup does not show that I voted that election. I did. It is very infuriating.

• Voted for Harris and liked her before she was cool. The reason? She helped a pedophile get out of jail. Confusing, I know. You see, a man had been sentenced and was serving time then the laws changed, with the new laws setting maximum term limits for certain offenses. The person had already served multiple years more than the maximum sentence allowed but still was on the old laws and had several years left. Harris secured his release. That is why I liked her as a candidate, she was willing to defend a pedophile to ensure justice was served as the law was written. That requires an amount of integrity and courage that few have in my opinion. Then a pedophile got elected instead.

As for other parties, the PSL has been very active around my city lately. I’ve gone to a few of their meetings and protests but am not a member, I just want to protest. Next election I don’t think will matter. Everything will be rigged or the results will be ignored. I’m preparing for that. I’m training in first aid, marksmenship, gardening and I’ve built a secluded underground shelter. The shelter is laughable and will not save anyone but it did build my upper body strength up.

I would sooner vote with a brick than vote for anything even slightly resembling the current CiC.

I vote for progress in primaries and damage control in generals.

I just also do other things when I’m not voting. If voting was actually as useless as many seem to think it is I don’t think we’d see such a concerted effort by those in charge to sequester “good” votes and manage elections. They’re trying to make it irrelevant because right now it still is relevant.

I vote for DSA candidates every time because there is essentially never a better option. If none are running, I vote as far left as I can. I vote in primaries and generals. Here are some current DSA candidates to check out if you’re in any of those districts: https://thedigradio.com/podcast/primary-struggle-w-abdul-el-sayed-and-other-insurgent-candidates/

I am to the left of social democrats, but even DSA has full-on socialist caucuses within it (varying by state/national DSA), see: https://dsa-lsc.org/2025/01/31/a-guide-to-dsa-politics/

I would never vote for the right. It’s a terrible plan because (1) it’s not gonna spark “a revolution”, it’s just going to create a more and more oppressive society without building any power on the left – that’s just some apocalyptic savior narrative that sounds more like anime than real life; (2) it sacrifices others, starting with the most marginalized and vulnerable, in a vain hope of improving my own future, which means I’d be just as much a right winger as any “true believer” would be.

Voting isn’t enough. Act and organize locally. But also vote, especially in local elections.

Do any of you, living in the US, vote?

Yup, everyone does. If someone chooses not to vote, they have cast a voted for “I don’t care”. And have decided to let everyone else choose for them. They may not like any of the choices, but politics has always been “the art of the possible”. If they want perfect solutions, they need to start their own dictatorship. If they won’t or can’t do that, voting is the only bit of control they’re going to get. And that means some type of compromise with everyone else in society. It’s a terrible system, but history hasn’t provided a lot of better examples to follow. Don’t like the system, change it. And unless you have the force of arms to do it the violent way (and it’s really unlikely you do), you’re only real option is to do it via the soap box and ballot box.

Would you ever consider voting DSA/Socially democratic[?]

Sure, though not any time soon. One of the things I’d like to change about our system is the First Past the Post nature of elections. But, until that happens, the math just doesn’t work in most elections. I vote in primaries and vote for the options who most closely match my views in those. But, come the general elections (especially at the federal level), third parties are basically DOA. I’d rather vote “not Nazi” than sit on my thumbs and watch “Nazi” coast to victory because I’m stuck letting “perfect” be the enemy of “not a fucking Nazi”. Should the DSA reach a point that they aren’t an “also ran” in an election I’m voting on, sure I’d probably vote for them.

Would you ever vote for someone like Trump just to make things intentionally worse in the hopes of sparking off a revolution?

Well, it hasn’t happened with Trump. And looking at history, I really don’t think revolutions are such the clean and wonderful things people in online forums like to make them out to be. History provides lots of example of revolutions ending up with groups like the Taliban in charge and basically none ending up as egalitarian utopias.

Not sure if I will ever vote again at this point

That’s your choice, but you’ve made the choice to let other people decide your government. You can sit on the sidelines and stew in your own smugness. But, no one cares. And no one will ever care about your opinions if you’re not willing to enter the political milieu and fight for them.

Voting every election I knew about where I lived since 2000 (Nader for president!) Always Green party except for Obama in 2008 (we need reparations, but that was closest thing). Voted Kamala, because it was what it was. I was really excited about Andrew Yang, because UBI is brilliant. Now… I’m learning español. 🙁

Voted in my primary this week.

I rarely see any third party in the ballot, and most seem to be some form of Republican but worse.

I don’t know if I could vote for an anti-capitalist in the near future in the system we have now. We aren’t really set up to give a third party capitalist a fair shot, let alone an anti-capitalist. It is near impossible to even form a union and has so far been impossible to gain universal healthcare, so electing an anti-capitalist is going to be harder than that.

If it were a primary and I was fine with the leading Democratic candidate, then I’d be fine showing support for a more radical party if I shared their beliefs.

I vote in every election. New York has ranked choice for some things now, which is nice. The way judges are picked is pretty bad, though.

Vote for the most left with one hand, throw your Molotov’s with the other. The right is hitting every avenue, so we do too. But fuck voting in America is always so ass in so many ways. Democracy should be easy, and its fucken impossible to even find information on local election candidates in your area when the time comes. Like how am I supposed to know the details about every candidate running for mayor in my city when theres millions of people, searching their info online doesnt bring anything up, and the pamphlets kind of read more like propaganda fliers than statements and info on the candidates. The entire fucken things needs to be reworked.

I am in the top 2% of citizens in my state for voter participation (they include that state with our registration, I didn’t seek it out). I vote as far left as I can in basically every primary and election. I don’t have faith in accelerationism because at this point I truly have no idea what would wake up the American populace to what is happening to them. They all bitch about the same problems but continue to choose the people who create them

I vote, and I’m not going to stop but I’m also drowned out living in TN where everything is stacked to keep a Republican super majority.

My most powerful vote is often in the primaries where I can vote for the least evil Republican.

I vote in every election. I will always vote for the candidate most aligned with my values. I do not vote by party lines (though frankly with the direction of the one major party has moved it sure looks like I do).

Always vote. Especially in your local elections. They matter and very few people participate.

I do vote, I would consider voting for Social Democrat candidates, I’m probably not to the left of them and I’m not anti-capitalist (though I am anticorporatist).

I’ve never heard of PSL.

I would never vote for someone like our current President, for any office; accelerationism I find ethically repugnant.

Please vote. Even submitting an empty ballot is better than not voting.

The Greens are not anti-capitalist, no. I vote Green for all the offices they run for in my local elections.

I vote in a swing state.

I vote for ballot initiatives and then use the DSA’s voter guide for local elections. For president it’s always PSL. Voting for a DSA member isn’t getting an ML revolution, but it is sewer socialism at a local level. Sewer socialism is powerful in a country where the little infrastructure that does work still drives a 20th century society. Americans are radicalised into fascism twice a day on their commute.

Would you ever vote for someone like Trump just to make things intentionally worse in the hopes of sparking off a revolution?

Accelerationism falls into the same wishful thinking category as adventurism. Not wanting blood on my hands is why I don’t vote for democrats. If I throw a chaotic evil boomerang by voting for a fascist, that’s just voting for a democrat and hoping it blows back on enough people to do something before hitting me. The closest thing I’ve found to a good ML path is what the Black Panthers were doing in the 1960-70s. Electoralism and existing power structures might have been cynically engaged, like funding the mutual aid initiatives or electing a politician who might give them breathing room, but power came from organising in their communities and building up dual structures that linked intersectionally with other orgs. Revolution was putting up a stop sign where the city wouldn’t so that the residents watching learned that they had power. It was feeding hungry kids while their parents were engaged in discussions about their issues. Those things can’t be trusted to electoralism because politicians are temporary and usually replaced by their opposite.

I vote PSL where I can, but I live in a relatively “Small-Town” area and so I’m not necessarily opposed to voting for good local Dems for city, county etc. elections.

I think a lot of Internet MLs use ideology as a way to justify not being politically literate wrt local politics because “they’re all just the same”. That’s largely true at the Congressional level, sure, but chances are there are good people running as Democrats (or Independents) in your locality who probably won’t be truly revolutionary but don’t really need to be.

The city council of Yuriev-Polsky didn’t need to be full of Bolsheviks for the Russian Revolution to succeed. I think at the local level it’s most important to fight corruption and outright Bourgeois power-grabbing and to elect representatives who roughly represent the people they govern (to do otherwise would be a form of Ultra-Leftism).

I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. There are some Democrats - Mayor Malik, Congresswoman Emilia Sykes, Fiscal Officer Kristen Scalise, etc. - who are corrupt, Zionist pieces of shit who I will never vote for. There are other Democrats, like Donofrio and Shmidt on the county council, or Fran Wilson on the city council, who I quite like and would vote for easily.