In just five short months, the man or woman who will serve as President of the United States will be chosen. While some voters are firm in their decisions, many are still undecided. Where I come from active voters like to use this phrase in their decision making process, "Well, you just have to decide who the lesser of the two evils is, and then cast your vote for that person." There are so many things wrong with this phrase, and if we really believe in the validity of our vote, we have to stop saying this.
Many voters try to justify this phrase with their faith. In fact, they are often the same ones who like to call one presidential candidate or the other "the antichrist." But whether or not you agree with President Obama's political decisions, it turns out he was not the antichrist. Actually, he has a birth certificate, says the Pledge of Allegiance and is an American citizen as well. There is evil out there. There is an enemy, and he wants to do everything he can to keep American people (and ALL people) away from God for an eternity. But I can promise you, nothing in our faith tells us that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is evil.
Also, let's just say that those same people who use that phrase really only mean that we have to pick the candidate who is not as "bad" as the other. To quote my father, "How would you really know which one is better?" In the end, it's kind of impossible to know. A lot of the work the President does is simply a reaction to a situation that has not happened yet. For a recent example, when Bush II was elected (contrary to the beliefs of the conspiracy theorists) he had no idea the Twin Towers were going to be attacked. Whether or not you agree with his reaction, you can say it certainly did not favor into your vote in 2000. Wars and natural disasters can come out of nowhere; the stock market can crash at any time. A President will be remembered by his response to those things. Often times, we don't feel the effects of what the person who was in office has done until years after that person has left. Simply put, we can't tell the future, so let's stop trying.
The most common justification for the use of the phrase "lesser of two evils" is that "if I voted third party, I would just be throwing my vote away." No. That's your voice; you only throw it away by refusing to vote. Many Americans fall prey to the Great Man Theory: essentially they refuse to do something that might make a difference because they believe that one common man cannot change the future. If we all refused to be that person, then the world would truly change. I'm not saying that everyone should vote third party (that's another article for another week), but if you want to vote third party, then go for it by all means.
But, back to the original point, millennialsHATEthe phrase "lesser of two evils," and it's not just because we're all young liberals without a moral conscience. It's because it just confuses us further on who we're going to vote for, and in an election year like 2016, we owe it to ourselves to minimize the confusion.
