by Jake Carmin
If you’re voting third party this year, I understand. You also have my sincere apologies.
Gary Johnson is not going to win this election; neither is Jill Stein. She probably has a higher chance of getting struck by a meteor, attacked by a shark and finding Nemo all while winning the lottery than she does of beating Johnson.
If either of these two are your champions, I feel for you; I really do. 2016 has become the electoral equivalent of a landfill fire: it’s toxic, never ending and it’s going to be our generation’s problem in eight years.
I can hardly blame anyone for wanting to forego supporting our major parties. There are serious objections to raise with both candidates. Hillary Clinton has been accused of multiple ethical violations, and though some of the charges have certainly been exaggerated, there are enough concerns that it is difficult to determine her trustworthiness. Yet her competitor is worse.
Donald Trump has knowingly told blatant lies, courted racist extremist groups, insulted veterans, along with a litany of gaffes that would have doomed any other serious candidate’s chances of victory.
If you’re a Democrat, you’re not likely to need this article. Even die-hard Bernie Sanders fans can probably agree that Clinton is a better option than Trump. A protest vote for a Democrat makes little sense; even if Sanders or Stein better represents your policy desires, preventing a Trump presidency is a more important priority.
For Republicans, the equation is different. For me, a Clinton White House isn’t ideal, but it’s clearly a better option than the GOP’s alternative. I’ll take a slightly unfavorable economic policy over a suicidal one any day. Though I don’t love Clinton’s foreign policy, at least she doesn’t openly idolize Vladimir Putin.
Other conservatives have a harder time making that choice. Trump might be a bad guy and a bad Republican, but Clinton has the potential to appoint four Supreme Court justices in her next term, and that will radically change Republican attempts at lawmaking for at least a decade.
Yet Republicans who really want free trade, a balanced budget, reduced federal government, and a shrewd foreign policy cannot, and should not, look to Trump. He stands for almost the polar opposite of what mainstream conservatives have worked towards for decades. Clinton would be bad for these Republicans, but Trump offers no respite from damaging economic and foreign policies.
It seems that for these conservatives, voting third party is a sound decision. Johnson, though aloof, is in some ways more Republican than Trump. He wants a reduced federal role in government (to say nothing of drug regulation), a non-interventionist foreign policy, free trade and will likely appoint less liberal justices than Clinton. Even the overreported “What is Aleppo?” blunder pales in comparison to Trump, who told the media for years that President Obama was a Kenyan (spoiler: he isn’t), and Clinton, who told reporters that FBI Director James Comey testified she had done nothing wrong (spoiler: he didn’t).
So what’s the catch? Easy: Johnson mathematically can’t win. Even if he took every undecided, #NeverTrump and #NeverClinton vote, those committed to Trump and Clinton deny him a shot at a majority in nearly every state. Moreover, he lacks both the extensive fundraising and the presidential solemnity that is required for serious consideration. But he does have the power to deny one of the other candidates the White House.
Does a vote for Johnson mean you’re throwing away your vote? Not necessarily. If you’re a person who feels that neither Trump nor Clinton will promote your interests and policy preferences, then a third party vote isn’t meaningless. At bare minimum, you send a message to the major parties: ‘both candidates are equally awful and the policy tent wasn’t big enough for me. Do better next time.’
You can use your vote to tell the GOP that they maybe shouldn’t have gone with the angriest, least qualified (well, third-least; Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee were awful) candidate imaginable. If nothing else, it can at least soothe your guilty conscience when the victor causes a disaster.
On the other hand, if you think that Trump’s excesses and issues are far worse than anything Clinton has done or will do, a third-party protest vote is only going to make Trump’s victory more likely. And in a close state like Colorado (FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate polling for the state shows a slim three percent lead for Clinton), that matters. You won’t be in bad company; at least four former Bush administration officials have endorsed Hillary.
I still struggle with who my vote will go to this year; though I know it won’t be to Trump. If, this election cycle, we have to vote for the lesser of two evils, I can accept that, though I’ll be severely dejected.
But the easy solution? In 2020’s primaries, don’t vote for anyone evil. Maybe, just maybe, we can cast a vote for someone because we support them, not because we fear their opponent.
According to Professor Ilya Somin in Democracy and Political Ignorance, your vote has, on average, a roughly 1 in 60 million chance of being the decisive vote in the Presidential election. If you choose to cote for either major party candidate, then you are simply participating in the ongoing debate of whether it is better to shoot puppies or drown them. Clinton and Trump are both power hungry and incompetent. Just because your candidate is not likely to win does not make it a waste, a vote for Clinton is lost in the millions of others. The same for Trump ballots. But a vote for Gary Johnson (or Dr. Stein, if you are so inclined) is a vote that will stand out as an active rejection of the two candidates offered us. Carmin posits in this piece that the best solution is to be active in the primaries of 2020. That is a good idea, but what about 2017, 2018 and 2019? Those years matter? Not to mention, that in all likelihood both parties will again offer options you find uninspiring at the least, perhaps even repulsive. If you don’t like bigoted strongmen yelling expletives and bragging about sexual conquests, the proper alternative is not to vote for a power-hungry political operative who actively lies at every opportunity. The only option that voices your displeasure in a way that won’t wash away in an ocean of Red/Blue votes is to vote third party. A vote for Johnson is not wasted, but rather a middle finger to the morons and lazy thinkers who caucused for Trump and Clinton.
That’s what I intended this article to say – since you do consider both candidates to be awful, a Johnson vote isn’t a waste. But to others, who may consider Trump to be a terrible candidate in all respects, voting for Johnson only increases the likelihood of Trump’s election.