It has already begun – if you vote for anyone other than someone in the two big political parties (the duopoly), it is a wasted vote.
That just isn’t true. The only wasted vote is an unprincipled vote.
While members of the duopoly will argue until the end of time, that if you don’t vote for such and such, then the other side wins. The problem is, maybe neither side should win some elections.
As an independent who chooses people over the duopoly, the biggest objection to voting for an independent, third-party candidate is that if you vote for anyone who isn’t in a major party, the person probably won’t win is that the vote doesn’t count.
That argument suggests that YOUR voice/vote doesn’t count unless you fall in step with the status quo. A vote is our voice and it does matter if we send a message during an election. Perhaps you totally believe in what yours stands for, fine. But voting under pressure to vote only for a big party candidate may be giving up your voice. Voting is a chance to tell the state and perhaps the country what your vision of government and society really is.
The fact that the majority who believe an independent or third-party candidate is the best choice end up voting for the one the two lesser of two evils is proof that people can discard their voice very easily. Voting for the lesser of two evils is a defensive vote – not an offensive one. In the end, the lesser of two evils is still evil.
A defensive vote is selling out personal beliefs in many cases. You aren’t really standing up for what you believe and merely preserving the status quo.
It is important to remember that a single individual never decides the winner in most statewide and even national elections. If by some mathematical chance it got that close, it would probably be decided in the courts. We witness time and time again that candidates who lose close races are content to accept the verdict of the voters, and both the big parties will pull out all stops to overturn the voters’ decision.
We as individuals don’t vote to select the winner.As a practical matter, we vote to tell everyone else which choice best represents the direction that we want.
Hence voting for the lesser of two evils, whether Republican or Democrat, sends the wrong message - it’s sending a message of compromise. People deserve more than compromise and should not be settling for anything but the best.
Ayn Rand said it best, “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only death that profit. In that transfusion of blood, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube… When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels – and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing bargaining, traitorous good and a selfrighteously uncompromising evil.”
Remember, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. In other words, if you want change, then create change by voting for it.
In America, third parties serve as the vanguard for new ideas - ideas that make the world go round. If a third party draws votes, the duopolyis more than happy to steal their ideas.
Many Americans have become unhappy with the duopoly political system and feel that their votes do not amount to anything.
According to a 2022 Pew survey, only 32% of American adults feel that the duopoly political parties align with their views. Translation: an overwhelming majority of Americans are not happy with the government and election process.
In a truly representative democracy, the people’s elected officials should be obligated to consider their constituents’ ideas, interests, concerns and welfare in rendering political decisions – but that disappears when choices are chiefly limited to the duopoly candidates who superficially represent completely opposite views.
To make matters worse, the champions of elections are indebted to the rich who funded their campaigns, rather than to the constituents they were elected to represent.
Gallup polling found that 49% of Americans see themselves as politically independent – the same as the two major parties put together.And why the duopoly makes it next to impossible to get independents on ballots.
Think about it. Think what 49% of the voters could do if their voices/ votes were heard.