For context I am a liberal leftist, and only want responses and explanations from other leftists as this is an issue among us specifically.

Everything I thought I knew about voting is apparently wrong and for that reason I think I should just opt out. It was my own understanding that you vote for your interests, beliefs, and what you think is "the greater good", and if you're not the popular vote, then you don't win. But for the past couple weeks, as the midterms approach, there has been a lot of discourse online about one's character based on how and IF they vote. And it's all within the same side. The leftist side. My inability to understand the nuance, or reasoning behind these talking points lead me to believe that maybe it's valid for me to opt out, as long as I don't complain and just follow the rules as presented and do what America(ns) want(s).

I thought I was supposed to, like I mentioned before, vote based on my own beliefs, interests, opinions, and how I think certain candidates and policies would affect others. I thought votes were counted based on popularity and my vote doesn't win because not enough people believe the in the policies that I do. What I care about typically aligns with the independent, third party candidates, but now people are being called "terrible people" for "wasting their vote" on, essentially, what they believe in. My brain short circuits here. The "lesser of two evils" thing would only make sense to me, if there were only two candidates. But there are several other candidates that don't have to be "evils". I acknowledge that I don't have the popular view, but that's literally the game. That's what makes it a democracy.

Not voting at all is the actual waste, and I can agree with that. But us not being able to agree within the same side is not a moral failure. Us not being the majority is not a moral failure. You being afraid to vote for what you believe is not a moral failure (assuming it's not literally harmful to the public, cough). And I can't understand how it people think it is.

Honestly, I think it would have been better it ballots were solely based on policies that directly affected law. Rather than individuals that get to be voted in, as people proudly refer to them as evil, metaphorically (or literally).

When people say "these people get to vote, btw" I think of myself. It's a lot of cognitive dissonance occuring here on my end.

I built a tool that lets people vote on real congressional bills and compare how their own reps voted. What surprised me from early usage - most people are significantly less aligned with their representatives than they assume.

That raises a question: if voters had easy access to their rep's actual voting record, would it change how they vote? Or is party identity strong enough that record barely factors in?

Curious what you all think. The tool is yeaornay.org if you want to see your own numbers.

It's absolutely clear that Florida (controlled by GOP for too long now) wants to minimize how many people vote.

Do any states cover postage?

It used to be that states had open primaries, You didn't have to be registered to a political party to vote. You could also cross party lines to vote for the best candidate. Political parties didn't like it because they felt it weakened their party,

The problem is the closed primary system disenfranchises all the independents, which are a majority of the voters. This means that only a minority of voters that belong to the parties pick the candidates and they're biased to the right or left of center, Because of this, we are getting substandard candidates on both sides.

Is it time to let independent voters select the best candidates again?

Your vote shouldn't depend on where you live. But right now, it does.

Gerrymandering and the Electoral College mean that some votes are worth way more than others. A vote in Wyoming carries nearly four times the weight of a vote in California. District lines are redrawn to lock in power for one party, no matter what voters actually want. These aren't new problems—they're just gotten more sophisticated with data analytics, and they hit minority communities hardest.

I started a petition to ban gerrymandering, reform how districts are drawn, and overhaul the Electoral College so every American's vote actually matters equally. We're talking about independent commissions to handle district mapping and real structural change that puts the power back in voters' hands—not politicians'.

If you've ever felt like your vote doesn't count, or watched district maps get drawn in ways that don't make sense—you're not wrong. What's your take on this? Do you think voting reform should be a priority? If it does matter to you, consider signing and sharing it.

Says only people on list he is creating can vote

Help get as many voters across the country as possible adding their votes in for if they support or oppose the SAVE America Act before it comes up for a vote in the Senate likely this week!

See all the info and link to add your vote in through Voatz from our bill page: https://www.digitaldemocracyproject.org//bills/save-america-act-hr7296-2026

If anyone want's a more visual explanation.

I always knew that the number of US citizens who don’t have passports/birth certificates was a lot of people.

Per “ Reporting from The 19th News shows that 69 million women and 4 million men do not have birth certificates that match their current legal name.”

Then I recently learned how rare it is for non-citizens to vote in US elections, “approximately 0.04% of votes. ”.

My husband and I have been discussing this. He really thought voter fraud has been a much higher amount occurring in US elections just because a MAGA friend had told this. He had never bothered to check his facts.

I know I don’t want those 73 million citizens excluded from voting. I don’t want to put barriers in the way of their voting.

Heck, I would like Election Day to be a Federal Holiday or a weekend. “A Pew Research Center analysis finds that 27 of the 36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development hold their national elections on the weekend, while two others (Israel and South Korea) hold elections on weekdays but make those days national holidays…”

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/four-things-to-know-about-noncitizen-voting/