Most people I've talked to are not happy with the way this election cycle is shaping up. Hillary vs. Trump is practically a lose-lose situation, anyway you decide to look at it, which is precisely why George Washington advised against political parties all those years ago. You all took high school American history, right? Good. So you remember learning that, too. But why does it matter? We've had political parties for nearly all 240 of the years that the U.S. has existed, so why is it a problem now?
It's a problem because in an election like this, where the majority of people dislike both candidates, they feel pressured into voting for the lesser of two evils. The implications of the two-party system make this a black-and-white issue, where you either vote for one or the other, or worse, you don't vote at all. Contrary to popular belief, those are not the only options.
The independent parties have been small, on the fringe of most major elections for years. They occasionally win a few seats in Congress, but as far as big elections go, they rarely get attention. Until this year. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, has been a popular Google search ever since the Republican and Democratic nominations seemed secured. I don't think he's going to win, by any means, but I do think he'll get a significant amount of the vote. Enough to make Washington notice and force them to take the independent parties more seriously.
Change isn't going to happen overnight. It's clearly not going to happen by November, but if it starts in this election, we could see the effects of it later in local and state elections. By showing people that they do have another option, we can create a better democratic system. One in which people don't just vote for their party candidate because they feel pressured to, but one in which citizens stay informed about the issues and make their vote based on what they actually think, not a feeling of party loyalty.
Two hundred and forty years ago, when the founding fathers decided that enough was enough, they pledged "to form a more perfect union." We're hardly perfect, but we're still one of the most powerful, influential nations in the world. Having a democratic system that allows for more choices would only strengthen that.
