I think you might have misunderstood me. Like a lot. In the hopes you are intending to have an honest conversation I’ll try to address the misunderstandings.

In response to my first statement you stated

It is very much false, in any literal sense. When they count up the votes, they do not add third party votes to the other side.

If you had read me correctly I said

And yes voting for one is not a vote for the other. Likewise voting 3rd party is not voting for the other. In any literal sense this is true.

Which is completely in agreeance with your position on the matter. If I’m incorrect on this, then you are as well because we have the same opinion on this. :)

on to the next bit

No, I’m not “hurting” Harris’ chances. I’m just not helping them. I am not taking a vote away from Harris, if you wipe me away from existence, Harris doesn’t have “one less vote” than she would have otherwise, she has the exact same number. So this is also wrong.

If the premise is to avoid a trump election, then you are incorrect here. If the premise is solely talking about whether abstaining is helping or hurting, then you are right. But, the argument of “if you aren’t voting for harris you are voting for trump” that I’m endeavoring to explain (in a hopefully helpful or at least friendly way) is predicated on the notion that those saying that are working to prevent a trump election. In that specific scenario, which is the root of all this discussion, then yes, if one is not helping the side opposed to trump, they are helping trump, even if that help is by inaction. The being dead position isn’t analogous enough to be an accurate comparison because the dead can’t vote.

Next you commented the following

When they say you voting 3rd party is a vote for trump, it’s not literal. You just said it was literal.

I can see how this could be misinterpreted. Those saying “if you aren’t voting for harris you are voting for trump” are not making a literal assertion that you are voting for trump. It’s intention is closer to “…you are helping trump” It’s not meant as a literal statement that your vote is tallied under trump. Likewise I’m not asserting that votes are literally being tallied for trump when you abstain or vote 3rd party. My statement was the exact opposite and again in-line with your opinion.

Next you replied to

If you don’t help a cause, you hurt it. And the same goes for 3rd parties. If you don’t help them, you hurt them.

Categorically false. If someone on the other side of the world murders someone, and I did nothing to help the victim, did I hurt them? No, I just didn’t help them. The baseline or zero-point is non-involvement.

That analogy doesn’t work because in that case you can do nothing to help the victim on the other side of the world and have no involvement, nor is there any group component. A closer analogy would be something like “Someone was about to be murdered but there are 5 people with buttons in front of them. If 3 of the buttons are pressed the person will live.” In this scenario which more closely resembles the scenario we are discussing, your inaction could lead to the person being murdered if only two other people press their button, the inaction of you and the remaining others resulted in a murder. It may have no impact at all if there are 3 people that press regardless of you, or maybe everyone is apathetic and no one presses, but your button press could also be what saves the person. That’s more like what voting is like. In the end, you may or may not matter. But you take a few “doesn’t matter” people here and there throughout the country and it makes an impact one way or another, especially in states where races get close. A local election in my own state was decided by a matter of 28 votes. While federal is broader it’s the same concept.

Next

Again, false. I’m not increasing the chances for their competition, I’m just not decreasing their chances.

Ehhhh, that’s a bit of a semantic wordplay that’s not entirely truthful because it only works in a hard literal sense. So by not decreasing the chances of the trump, you are definitely increasing the chances he gets elected by however small an amount that may be. If you just don’t vote, or vote 3rd party, you have decreased his chances to a degree because he doesn’t get your vote, but you do more by voting for harris, because you help her increase as well as not increase trump. It becomes a compound effect and so one could say by not opting for the compounded effect, you’ve aided trump by not opposing him as much as possible.

Lastly,

I have no idea if “most people” view it that way or not, but regardless, it’s not how I view it and I don’t think it’s a reasonable way to view it.

I say “most people” talking about the group we find ourselves in here. It’s a probably little hyperbolic to say “most”, just anecdotally what I’ve witnessed here. And as far as being reasonable or not I don’t have a real strong opinion either way here. I do tend to find that that’s not always a reasonable way to view things. In the position of the argument, “if you aren’t voting for Harris you are helping trump” I tend to think it’s accurate. But it’s fine, we don’t have to agree on anything. I’m not trying to convert anyone at this point. People are gonna people and at this point in the election cycle people’s minds are already made up. I was just trying to give some info to the position regardless of my opinion on it. :)