Alaska has Ranked Choice voting.

The existence of other candidates is not the same thing as any of them having the slimmest chance in hell of winning, and the way our cursed voting system works, they’re going to end up drawing votes away from the “major” candidate that most closely aligns with them. As a result, the “major” candidate they most oppose has one less vote they need to overcome. That means that until and unless a 3rd party candidate manages to completely overshadow one of the major political parties, which is effectively never going to happen, a 3rd party vote is just one more vote your most opposed candidate doesn’t need to beat.

And no, 3rd parties are not going to overshadow the major parties. It’s just not going to happen. Look at the absolute dogshit circus that is Trump, look at how many lifelong Republicans have vowed to never vote for him, how he’s absolutely obliterated any little shred of legitimacy the GOP had as a governing party. Now recognize that with that utterly weakened, vulnerable position, that best chance ever, no 3rd party has managed to even come close to unseating them as one of the inevitable 2 contenders. If it hasn’t happened now, it won’t happen ever, not with FPTP voting.

Oh I absolutely see how it happened. It’s rooted in that love of “Technically correct.” I can absolutely see one of them saying “All I did was have a picture of a scrabble tile with the letter G on it. Is having a single scrabble tile illegal? You can’t simply keep us from associating with each other, the first amendment protects the right to peaceably assemble!” All the while they know very obviously what they did, it’s just that they thought they could technically get away with it. They figured that if no one of them openly used the whole word, they couldn’t possibly face any consequences.

Fallout 76 said the same thing. How’d that work out?

I do full size candy bars, but I’ll also drop a handful of loose candy corn instead into the bag of someone who’s clearly too old.

They think it’s a hoax meant to funnel money into the pockets of scammers pushing these new green techs. They think it’s just enriching liars who want to vilify things these people loved, all while making things somehow worse. Their vision isn’t of a better future, they see a scammer getting rich while their power goes out every time it’s cloudy outside or the wind stops.

I’d say this is a great time for even more advertisers to abandon that platform, but really anyone who would care about this should have left a long time ago.