It's crunch time. With only five weeks left until the general election, stakes are high, people are scared, and soon we will have to choose between Mr. or Mrs. President. I know what some of you are thinking, what about that guy Gary Johnson or that lady Jill Stein? In 2016, why are we still choosing between the lesser of two evils?
I'm not surprising anyone when I say that this country is highly dissatisfied and upset by the political process. Bernie supporters were crushed by the lies from the Democratic National Convention and have a hard time unifying under the Democratic party's official nomination, Hillary Clinton.
On the other side, Republican establishment members are having an even harder time getting behind Republican nominee, Donald Trump. The playing field was so widespread in the primary season that Republicans were not able to get behind one opposition candidate to defeat Trump, explaining his journey to nomination.
So, if we're so dissatisfied with both of our candidates, why don't we vote for a third party candidate who will tussle up the election process or should we write in Bernie's name in form of protest?
This is NOT the year for a protest vote.
We could argue that throwing in a random name or voting a third party candidate will be able to sway the 2016 election, but political scientists know better than this. In case you are unfamiliar, I want to give you a short explanation of our general election process.
We all get a ballot on November 8th and cast our vote for a candidate or a party from the general election down to our individual local elections. In most states, other than Maine and Nebraska, all ballots are cast in terms of electoral votes in a state winner-take-all fashion. A candidate needs a total of 270 electoral votes in order to win the election. Electoral votes are gathered by popular vote, but we do not elect by a popular majority, the Electoral College still has the final say.
Let me repeat that, we elect by winner-take-all. (Keep that in mind, I'll come back to it later.)
Give me some stats.
A recent article from fivethirtyeight.com shows support for candidates after Monday's debate. It's looking better for Clinton, but it's still looking bad for both candidates. Results from their polls show a 4% lead for Clinton in national averages. That is a very small margin of votes needed to select one candidate versus the other.
An article from the New York Times, shows Libertarian party Gary Johnson with 10% support in national averages! That's pretty good for third party candidates, considering they usually only get about 1-2% support in national polls.
The problem: split votes.
As I mentioned already, Trump appeared as the Republican front-runner, because the rest of the Republican electorate was confused by the plethora of candidates running for their party. Instead of unifying for one candidate like Cruz or Rubio, who the majority of the party actually supported, they were spread thin, leaving Donald Trump as the winner.
While that's on your mind, let's travel back in time to Florida in 2000. Remember who was on the ballot, Al Gore, George W. Bush, and third party candidate, Ralph Nader. Apart from Florida's actual ballots being super confusing and easy to mess up, they had another problem. Nader received 0.009% of the Florida vote. If that percent went to Al Gore instead, he would have won Florida and became our 43rd president, and who knows would have happened.
Vote on the facts.
It's time for us to put emotions aside and vote for a presidential candidate who won't run this country into the ground. Ignore the emails, ignore the racist comments, ignore the bickering, and vote on policy! I understand you all are very busy people, but this is the future of the country we're talking about. Take 10 minutes out of your day for the next couple weeks and really learn about your candidate's policies and positions, and vote with your brain!
If we can redirect the percentage divided support towards one of the two major-party candidates, we can elect the right person. Dividing our support between three or four candidates this year is going to allow radicals on both sides to come out victorious. For the well-being of the moderate electorate, pick a side using your head, not your heart.
