It's November 2016. You walk in to the voting booth and take a deep breath. It's time.
It's time to vote for the president of the United States, the person that will lead the country for the next four to eight years.
It's time to vote for the face of the United States, the person who will speak for us to the rest of the world.
So you pull out your pen or pencil and stare down at the ballot. You have the obvious choices, the ones you hear mentioned on the radio and TV on a daily basis, and the ones that, no matter how hard you try, you can't escape from -- Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It seems that you know everything about both candidates, both good and bad.
Even after the months and months of listening to presidential candidate ads, researching candidate positions, and watching the debates, you still aren't really sure who is the better choice.
Or maybe you do have an idea of who you would be better -- but you know they're still not the best.
It's possible that you believe that, no matter who you vote for this election, it's a vote for the lesser evil.
So you look down the page, skim pass Hillary and Donald, and see a few more candidates. Depending on what state you're in, you might see Jill Stein, Green Party Candidate. You will have the option for a write-in candidate and you might choose to "Feel the Bern" and write-in Bernie Sanders. But there is also one other candidate that will be on the ballot in all fifty states this year -- Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party Candidate.
You stare at these other options. You want, so badly, to find someone new, someone that will be better for the United States than you know Trump or Clinton will be. Unfortunately, you know very little about the other options. You really didn't hear anything about the other candidates on the radio or TV. Besides, they have no chance of winning.
So you vote for the lesser of two evils.
But here's the thing -- you may have voted, but are you really, truly happy with your choice? You may be under the impression that if you don't vote Clinton or Trump, you're actually throwing your vote away. Or, even worse, you're actually voting for the opposite party's candidate.
You may think that. Millions of people across the United States think the same. They believe that if they vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or write in Bernie Sanders, their votes won't count.
But let's think another way. Let's imagine that every person who believes their third party vote won't matter actually did vote third party. What would happen then? Who would win the election?
It may not be one of the lesser of the two evils that you're struggling with right now.
