Ask any of my friends, any member of my family, or my boyfriend- they’ll all tell you that I used to care a lot. I’ve always liked politics and discussing social issues (hence the major in social work). I was excited to potentially vote for a candidate with whom I agreed with on most, but certainly not all, fronts. However, since he sold out to the very people and corporations his entire campaign was aimed against (and that’s another article entirely), I’m really not all that interested in the election. Definitely, I will still vote, but I can say for sure that it will not be with the excited-ness and hopefulness of before.

I know I’m not alone in this. Even if you never supported Bernie Sanders, do you genuinely support Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Obviously, many people do, but too many others are planning to vote for who they believe is the lesser of two evils. The downside to this being, the lesser of two evils is still evil.

Is a third party vote really a wasted vote in this case? What is one supposed to do with a candidate who is so clearly bigoted and misogynistic? Or a candidate who has the ability to manipulate millions into believing that she is not a criminal? As for me, I don’t think I could vote for either nominee given to the United States right now. I understand that nobody is perfect, and that includes politicians. I get it- anybody I vote for is going to have flaws. I have never claimed to be searching for the perfect candidate, but when one nominee wants to put an unconstitutional ban on an entire ethnicity of people from entering the United States, and the other can’t be trusted with something as simple as an e-mail account, I’m going to start looking towards the third party.

Gary Johnson, a conservative leaning libertarian, does not have a great chance at gaining a significant amount of traction for his campaign. Right now, he’s polling at about 13%, while he needs to reach 15% to even make it into the Presidential Debates. Regardless of his low polling numbers and the fact that I only agree with him on about half of his stances, I can almost guarantee that he has my vote. He is neither Trump nor Clinton, and he appears to have a brain. In an election as pathetic as this one, that’s good enough for me.