In public school government classes, third parties were essentially skimmed over. Teachers spoke of Republicans and Democrats and mentioned anything else as smaller other parties that need not be mentioned and wouldn’t be on the test (in case you didn’t know, that’s how school works they only teach what will be on the test). I guess until now I’ve been putting off making any decisions on voting but this is crunch time and I can’t avoid this any longer. I look at the two primary candidates and honestly cringe. When I ask friends and family for voting advice their answers always sound something like, “well I guess we’ll just have to vote for…..”.

I’m sorry but that’s not good enough for me. I strongly dislike both candidates, I wish they had not been chosen as the party nominees and I refuse to vote for someone that my gut feels so wrong about. This decision left me with two options, not voting at all or researching third party candidates and choosing someone else. I started looking into third parties and realized contrary to what I’ve been taught third party votes do matter, especially in an election such as this one.

This election is marked with the highest candidate dissatisfaction in two decades. As of September, 63% of voters say they are “not at all or not very satisfied” with the candidate options. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, the dissatisfaction comes from both parties with only 36% of registered Republicans claiming to be satisfied with Trump as the candidate and only 35% of registered Democrats claiming to be satisfied with Clinton as the candidate.

Do not let yourself believe that this system is only giving you two candidates that you do not agree with because there are more options, and a time like this is when they can make a difference. I am going into this election saying even if my candidate doesn’t win, I will not be embarrassed or ashamed of the person I vote for. I will believe in the candidate I vote for and believe that my vote for a third party candidate will demonstrate the flaws in a system that made the two primary candidates two people that are so strongly disliked throughout our nation.

For those who think Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are the only independent options, they aren’t. Do your research; there are still other options. I understand people who are trying to strategize and vote for the lesser of two evils, but personally, I don’t want to be associated with voting for evil at all and the only active response to rejecting both candidates is to vote for an independent. I’m also choosing to do this because it helps me to avoid the parental lecture of how one cannot complain if they did not vote. If I vote third party, I still have plenty of authority to complain about whatever the end result may be.