So now we're looking down the barrel of a Clinton/Trump general election. Going by every poll there is on the issue, people are less than happy with this situation. This is going to be the first election where people aren't so much going to be voting for someone as they going to be voting against whoever they happen to hate less. Well, I just want to let those people who despise Hillary and Donald in on a little secret: You don't have to vote for either of those people.
Seriously, you don't have to. There's no law or compulsion that says you do. If you think the Democratic or Republican candidate is an awful piece of shit that you can barely stomach voting for, than don't. It's that simple. Every year, there are there are third-party candidates on your ballot (in most states, anyway), find out who they are, and if their policy positions match your values, vote for them instead. The Democratic-Republican hegemony has held for too fucking long, and all it's doing now is strangling us with politicians whose only real differences amount to one trying to create an Ayn Randian Christian theocracy and the other wanting moderately better outcomes for minorities so they won't be crushed under student loan, mortgage, and credit card debt to the point where they can't buy shit anymore It's basically the choice of getting boned dry, or having some spit applied first.
Now, usually, when you bring up the idea of voting third-party it's usually met with a scoff and something along the lines of "Nobody votes for them, they don't have a chance of winning anything." Here's the problem with that though, nobody votes for them because of how conditioned the American public is to the idea that the only "real" political parties are the Democrats and Republicans. Also, there'll usually be some barb in there about how not voting for one of the Big Two even though you don't agree with anything the candidate will do is akin to throwing your vote away. This point, above all else, is bullshit. If you knowingly and willingly vote for people who don't represent you, than those officials never will. Because why would they? If they know for a fact that you're going to vote for them no matter what they do against your interests, what's the point of doing anything to help you? If you, as a voter, are going to throw away the only leverage you have, than you can't really complain when your elected government runs roughshod over you and yours and leaves you with absolutely nothing.
In 2014, there were 142 million registered voters in the country. Working off that and the voter turnout rate in of 57.5% in 2012, that leaves us with 81.7 million votes to work with. If, say, 20% of those possible voters went the third-party route, that would take little over 16 million votes away from the two mainstream candidates. You think that wouldn't go unnoticed?
Obviously, this only works for Presidential races. Third-parties have neither the membership or the money to support Congressional or state-level candidates, so for now, we're stuck with just the two parties in our backyard elections. But right now, with Hillary at 55% unfavorable's and Donald Trump at 60%, this is the one and only time that the majority of the country has so hated both of its primary presidential nominations. That majority can actually be translated into actual action, so don't let anyone tell you that if you don't like the two bigs that you're just part of some small, disgruntled minority that has no influence.
America, you've never really given me a reason to have faith in your ability to make good decisions. But please, for once in your life, especially now that you have a real chance to do it, please try to at least make your anger and discontent do something for you instead of just tossing it into the garbage dump of whichever "lesser evil" is on the ballot.
RT
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