The 2016 Presidential Election is going to be my first time voting. And it absolutely is not how I imagined my first election would be at all.

I thought it was going to be the same as all of the other elections I have been old enough to pay attention to—a typical Democrat vs. a typical Republican. Their policies would be more moderate-leaning than extremist, and they would be willing to compromise. I envisioned it would be boring old white men who would have boring debates.

I never imagined it would be like this.

I never imagined that one of the candidates would be the subject of an FBI investigation while the other candidate would have absolutely zero political experience at all.

I never imagined that their debates would be entertaining yet terrifying.

When Donald Trump first announced that he was running for president, I thought it was a joke. I thought that there must be some sort of government conspiracy going on—there was a popular conspiracy for some time that Trump would run as a Republican candidate in order to weed out opponents for Hillary (Clearly, that isn’t the case). I thought that he would never make it past the primaries because there was no way that America would let that fool of a man get close to the actual election.

Boy, was I wrong.

And here we are with an election that feels more like a reality show. The debates are amusing. The news about the candidates gets wilder each day. When I turn on the TV to watch news about this election, it feels like I have turned on MTV, not CNN. Somehow, we as a country messed up, and this is where we are now. There isn’t any turning back, though. This is what we have, and we’re going to have to deal with the consequences.

Some people think that it’s absolutely insufferable. Some people think that both of these candidates would lead to the demise of America. They view Trump as a misogynist, racist, xenophobic, sexist idiot with no experience, and Clinton as a lying snake. They can’t fathom either of them sitting in the Oval Office in January.

Their solution? Voting third party.

Gary Johnson and Jill Stein seem to be the popular options for this alternative. And, according to third-party voter logic, enough people appear to despise the candidates and this finally gives third parties a chance to emerge and take office…right?

Wrong.

For this election, splitting the vote and attempting to vote for third party in order to get a more desirable candidate for office is the last thing that should be done. In any other election, I would encourage people to vote third party. Vote for whomever you please. Vote for whomever has the views that mesh the most with yours.

I can’t force you to do anything. Your vote is your vote, and ultimately it is your decision in the end. But this situation is absolutely dire. If you already dislike Trump, you understand why he would be a terrible presidential candidate. Millions of lives would be at risk due to his views on deportation. Gay marriage would be delegitimized, and with such a homophobic man in office, it would be safe to assume that LGBT rights would regress severely. Not only are lives at danger because of his policies—the entire country is in danger because of his temperament.

If you watched the debate on Monday, you probably noticed how he interrupted Hillary nearly every time that she spoke. He barely lasted twenty minutes before he began to speak to her in a condescending, diminishing tone as if she were a lesser person for her views (or even for her gender, knowing his track record). Now imagine that at a conference with other worldly leaders. Instead of negotiating peacefully, he would negotiate with an attitude and lose his temper. That wouldn’t be good.

Other countries are already losing their respect for America just because he is even in the running in the first place. If Trump successfully wormed his way into office, imagine how many friendly foreign relations would be broken. Imagine how America’s reputation would plummet because of such an ignorant, immature leader.

Hillary may have had a scandal with the private emails. That was definitely wrong and there is no way to justify that, but in comparison to what Trump would get us into, it’s nothing. Hillary has over thirty years of political experience, whereas Trump has none.

Trump even commented on this during the debate. He said, “Hillary has experience, but it’s bad experience … so she’s got experience, that I agree. But it’s bad, bad experience … And this country can’t afford to have another four years of that kind of experience.”

Now ask yourself this. You’re going to have open heart surgery, which is a risky surgery with a 50% survival rate. Would you rather take your chances with the surgeon with over thirty years of experience who has made his or her share of mistakes? Or would you rather have one of the receptionists at the front desk poke around and hope for the best?

If you’re a rational person, you’d obviously choose the former. The fate of America is as important as your survival in a surgery.

Essentially, if you hate both of these candidates, you have to look at this in the “lesser of two evils” light. Comparing the proposed policies, personalities, and the experience of the candidates, it’s clear that the lesser of two evils in this situation is Hillary.

Hillary might make some bad calls during her presidency. All presidents do. But she wouldn’t risk the lives of millions of Americans, ruin our reputation as a country, and shatter our foreign policy like Trump would.

I get that you’re angry. I get that you are furious that we are presented with these two candidates for this election. I know that I personally rooted so hard for Bernie Sanders, and it shattered my heart to see him lose the primaries to Hillary.

However, as angry as you might be, this is not the time for a protest vote.

The more people that vote third party, the fewer people that vote Democrat. That would be ideal if we actually had enough people to vote third party. Sadly, that would require convincing millions upon millions of voters to vote for a third party candidate that the population as a whole agrees to try to support. That could never be possible. Personally, I don’t know what Gary Johnson or Jill Stein’s stances are. I barely knew of their existence until a few months ago, and I’m sure that if you ask a random person on the street, they’re more likely to not know than they are to recognize their names.

The third party vote will never be able to overtake the Republican vote. So, instead of successfully boosting your third-party candidate, you are instead taking votes away from Hillary, thus giving votes to Trump in a way.

I understand that there is some criticism of a two-party system being in place in America in the first place. George Washington himself warned against it during his presidency, and he was a wise man. But now is not the time to try to break the system. Now is not the time to express your anger. If you truly care about the state of America and truly understand how dangerous it would be to allow Trump into office, you will admit that voting third party is not the route right now.

Clay Shirky said it best:

“Throwing away your vote on a message no one will hear, and which will change no outcome, is sometimes presented as ‘voting your conscience’, but that’s got it exactly backwards; your conscience is what keeps you from doing things that feel good to you but hurt other people. Citizens who vote for third-party candidates, write-in candidates, or nobody aren't voting their conscience, they are voting their ego, unable to accept that a system they find personally disheartening actually applies to them.”

Sometimes it’s important to step back, reevaluate your perspective, and view the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that the third party isn’t going to win. The bigger picture is that your angry protest vote isn’t going to make a difference.

Even Bernie Sanders is discouraging the protest vote.

As I mentioned earlier, in the end, your vote belongs to you. If you choose to vote third party, I will at least commend you for exercising your right to vote in the first place. All that we can hope is for things to turn out okay, and for Trump to stay out of office—something that should have never been available to him in the first place. And the best way to do that is to avoid the protest vote and settle for Hillary.