In Parts I and II of this post, I talked about my history of never voting for a major party presidential candidate. However, I also discussed the Republican Party’s ongoing descent into populist anti-intellectualism, and I acknowledged that Barack Obama is superior to Mitt Romney in my view.
So will I finally vote, in earnestness and of my own volition, for a Democratic presidential candidate on November 6?
No.
And there are many reasons why not. Right out of the gate is the difficulty I have voting for a sitting president who continues to order unmanned drone strikes that repeatedly slaughter and maim Afghan civilians. I simply don’t want that blood on my hands. If that makes me soft or hypocritical, then so be it.
Living in Maryland also makes it easier for me to opt out of pulling the lever for Obama. Voting for him here has zero impact on the election’s outcome. Zero. The incumbent’s inevitable victory in the Old Line State will come by a nearly 2:1 margin. And that allows me the freedom to vote for whomever I want. Indeed, Obama’s victory in Maryland is such a fâit accompli, that casting a ballot for him is really akin to throwing your vote away. Why bother? And so Instead, I have the luxury of making a statement when I walk into the booth.
And I hereby state that I will be voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein of Massachusetts, and her running mate Cheri Honkala of Pennsylvania.
I support the Green Party for two main reasons. First and foremost, it best represents many (though not all) of my political views. When I vote for Green candidates, for the most part I am often actually suppor
ting political platforms I believe in. And that is what voting is suppose to be all about, right?
Beyond that, I also detest the Democratic-Republican political duopoly that dominates and corrupts our governments to their exclusive and mutual advantage.
I do realize that the two parties are in fact drifting farther and farther apart on basic issues. Furthermore, I believe that the Republicans are not only currently championing very bad economic policies, but are also increasingly giving themselves over to lunatics and ignoramuses. And for the record, I’m talking primarily about their candidates, not their voters.
At the same time, however, none of that changes the larger, systemic problem: Both parties are still comprise a lockstep duopoloy that maintains a vicious stranglehold on American politics.
The problem isn’t that the two parties are the same. They’re not. The problem is that both parties belong to and thoroughly dominate the same broken system. I really do believe that their actions and interactions with each other are a big, perhaps even the biggest, obstacle to fixing the American political system. Together they form the tragic dialectic of American politics.
For example, I’m very troubled that it is still all but impossible for a third party candidate to get anywhere in American politics. That this remains truer t
han ever, even as one of the two major parties becomes a haven for the ignorant and the unhinged, only underscores the problem: The system is so thoroughly rigged in favor of the two major parties that the obstacles to entry are nearly insurmountable.
Most every other functioning democracy in the world has multiple parties represented in its national and regional legislatures, instead of just the same two over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. At the most basic level, there’s something very wrong with American politics, and voting for the Democrats won’t fix it.
So while for many people, the Republicans’ ongoing descent into madness reinforces the need to support the Democrats, I’m not there yet. I believe that in the big picture, the ideological split between them is still not as important as the endemic incompetence and malfeasance that they jointly propagate.
Of course there are limits. If the Republicans continue going downhill, eventually I’ll come over to the Democrats as a practical matter of responsible behavior. However, I have yet to reach the point where I think we need the Democrats to ride in on their white horses to save us. Far from it.
Look, I realize there’s more riding on your vote if you’re among the roughly one-fourth of Americans who live in a swing state . But I and the other 75% don’t. So most of us can vote for whomever we want on Tuesday, including a smattering of minor league candidates, comfortable in the knowledge that it won’t affect the electoral outcome at all. And if enough people do so, it has the potential to contribute to fundamental changes down the road.
Sadly, however, many folks, even those unhappy with both the Dems and the Reps, just keep tossing redundant votes at candidates and parties that don’t inspire them.
And boy are there a lot of Americans unhappy with both parties.
Get this. Nearly HALF of all Americans polled in July said they would be voting for “the lesser of two evils” in the upcoming election. Forty-six percent of them to be exact. That was one percentage point more than the amount of 
people who said they were actually excited to vote for one candidate or the other (the poll’s margin of error was 3%).
Despite everything, including the growing divergence between the parties, this is how half of the nation feels. And I’m with them. But the difference between most of my fellow malcontents is that I just can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t pull the lever for Barack Obama on November 6. Because not only has he been a mediocre president, but as a loyal Democrat he’s a big part of the duopolistic nightmare that is forever plaguing American politics.
I’m not looking for purity or perfection. I understand that electoral politics is about compromise. But most of us need not vote for the major parties that half of all Americans believe are mostly hurting the country and degrading the political system. And why should we? Just because it’s better than the other party that’s hurting the country and degrading the political system?
The system is broken, and I refuse to contribute to its ongoing decline by voting for any of the perpetrators. Yes, the Republicans are doing more damage than the Democrats right now, I firmly believe that. But they’re both bad. And tens of millions of voters agree with me.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil. And voting means too much to me to do that. If you live in a swing state, then do what you think is practical. But if you, like I and most other Americans, do not live in a state that is up for grabs, then vote your conscience. Vote for w
hat you believe in.
So find your true voice. Green, Libertarian, Independent: support a party that actually comes close to representing your ideals and values. Because the current duopoly is not the solution.
It’s the problem.