With early voting happening in many states, including ours, I thought the election would be a proper thing to write on. A lot of people have been asking me lately who I will be voting for in a few weeks. I always answered that I didn’t know. I knew I disliked both of the partisan candidates, but I hadn’t done much research on the two third party candidates. I did research, and I thought I would share my opinion on what I found. Before starting this, I want to say that I am moderate, but that does not mean I am not biased.
My problems with the two partisan candidates are very simple. I support a few of each of their policies, but I cannot support either. Trump has said things that I could never stand behind, no matter my views on his policies. I think that character should be included in voting for president, and unfortunately, Trump had the personality of an adolescent boy, who is also a racist. Not to mention his running mate is so conservative it makes my head hurt. He has said that he thinks conversion therapy is an acceptable treatment for homosexuality. This therapy typically includes dehumanizing someone through psychological means, and sometimes shock therapy. They then attempt to build the person back up into a straight version of themselves. This treatment usually ends in suicide, and it's such an outdated way of thinking. It shocked me that this even could happen in our nation, but parents send their kids to conversion camps. I cannot stand the thought of these two in charge.
Calm down Hillary haters, I do not support her either. I am a strong believer in conspiracy theories, and I read the article about mysterious deaths surrounding the Clinton’s. That locked me in to the fact that she probably killed people. I also find it disturbing that 33,000 classified emails are mysteriously missing, which is technically treason. I could not believe she got away with that. Not to mention the voter fraud that happened all over America, when Bernie started to win against her. I fully believe that Bernie’s name should be the one on the ballot. I also think she will say anything to get elected, at least Trump has a backbone (even if it is too strong).
So I had no one to vote for, and I had decided to not vote at all. Since there is no way a third party candidate will ever win. Which is still true, but I realize that isn’t the point of voting third party.
The point of voting third party is to show your electorates that you are unhappy with the choices we were given.
If a third party candidate can win just a few states, that could mean that no candidate wins. It only takes a few electorate votes to take away the states needed to win the 270 votes for either candidate. If you were like me, thinking that voting third party would be a waste of a vote, stop thinking that way. If enough people stopped thinking this before the election, we could rip the win from both their hands.
I looked into both the third party candidate’s policies, straight from their websites. I didn’t get my information on them from anywhere else.
Gary Johnson has a lot of views that I agree with. The first one on his issues list was on the skyrocketing national debt, and how it is a serious threat to our national security. I was so glad to see a candidate talking about the national debt first, because it is what scares me the most about our country. Although, he didn’t have much of a plan to fix it. Which I found was how he was with a lot of his issues. He says what I want to hear, but doesn’t know how to get there. His plan for the national debt was to present a balanced budget. I am pretty sure people have thought of that, but it is impossible to fund everything we have without either going over budget or increasing taxes. I also liked how he proposed term limits on Congress, and I don’t feel like that would be hard to accomplish. I have always thought that having term limits would eliminate our highly partisan Congress. If you are worried about getting re-elected you either have to be super conservative or super liberal, moderates don’t get re-elected. We got where we are in this country through compromise, not fighting.
Jill Stein is on the ballot in 45 states, including ours. While Stein had very clear plans on how to fix her issues, there were a few issues I didn’t agree with. I really liked her plan to combat climate change, but I had a problem with her view on GMO’s. She thought that we should label GMO’s until they are proven to be safe for consumption, but most of our food is made from GMO’s. She is a proponent of the $15 minimum wage, which I personally don’t think will work like everyone hopes it will. I like her plan for universal healthcare, seeing how Obamacare was a horrible plan. Well, it was a good plan with horrible execution. I also enjoy the thought of free college, but that is probably because I am in college, and it’s so expensive. She wants to abolish standardized tests for high school diplomas. I stand behind this 100%, because standardized tests never tested my knowledge on anything I found I needed to know for college. Music majors need to know different things than a science major like me. Standardized schooling makes it to where everyone learns English and Math to the point of annoyance, and then after all that they are told they are stupid if they aren’t good at those subjects. I agree with her on demilitarizing our borders, and before you pro-wall people get offended, it is because recent studies have shown there are more illegal immigrants leaving the US than entering. Why not make it easier for them to leave? She thinks substance abuse should be treated as a medical condition instead of a crime. I have seen loved ones fight with substance abuse, and I can tell you it is something that is purely medical. It’s something in your genes. It shouldn’t be a crime to do something once, and not be able to stop. Putting these people in prison is getting them clean. Treating them psychologically would help them stay clean.
A lot of people my age feel we can make a difference in our vote, and we can. We have higher voter turnout rates than the past young generations. In fact, according to polls done by the Huffington Post, 83% of millennials are registered to vote. We were the deciding vote of 80 electorates in the last election. Without those 80 electoral votes, Obama wouldn’t have had enough votes to win the presidency. We can make a difference. So whether it be now or later, I urge you to get out and vote.
