This is about to be a rant about politics, if you read on, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.
In these last few days leading up to the US Presidential election, I keep seeing posts on tumblr urging people to withhold their vote or vote third party, and it’s driving me to distraction. Especially, especially, the idea that people should refuse to vote.
On one hand, I applaud the principle. Voting for a “lesser of two evils” is still voting for an evil; bravo to you if you refuse to participate. Voting third party because there’s a candidate you actually like is nice too; there is at least one third party candidate I would have really liked to see/hear a lot more of.
But at the end of the day, I think we need to be a bit more realistic right now. The election is in 3 days. Three. Days. The time to make these arguments is long past. The honest, if unfortunate, truth of the matter is that next year, when we talk about the President of the United States, we’re either going to be talking about Obama, or we’re going to be talking about Romney. We won’t be talking about the third party candidate who surprised everyone – it takes exposure to get votes, and I had to intentionally sit down and research to find information about the other nominees. And we won’t be talking about the dramatic turn of events in which everyone refused to vote and changed the course of US politics. At this point, neither of these things is going to make some grand statement, they’re just going to mean you have no say in whether Obama or Romney ends up running the country for the next 4 years.
And for all the people advocating a refusal to vote, have a good long think about how your life and the lives of those you care about will be effected by Obama or Romney. If either of those choices makes you absolutely shudder, bear in mind that by refusing to cast your vote, you’re helping him win.
If you want to stand up for your ideals in this manner, good. But do it when you have time to gain support and can work together as a cohesive force and actually matter, not in the week before the election.
The third-party vote thing may well be how we ended up with Bush instead of Gore—thank you, Ralph Nader. Now stop and imagine what we’d have if there had been no Bush—at the very least, no Iraq war. Afghanistan, sure, but the ungodly price of Iraq? And let’s not even talk about how Al “Inconvenient Truth” Gore could have addressed climate change (thank you, Hurricane Sandy, for making it an actual topic now). Anyway—please, just vote, and please, vote pragmatically.
No. No. Hell no. There is so much wrong with the “This time you can’t afford to vote third party” argument that I don’t even know where to begin. EVERY SINGLE TIME it will come down to this same scene. Every single election since I reached the age to vote has played out the same way, and I have been told this exact same thing. And I WILL NOT VOTE for “the guy I don’t like who’s got a hope of cock-blocking the guy I don’t like even more.” I will vote for the guy—or gal—who best represents what I feel are the policies that’ll do right by this country.
FYI: that’s third party, pretty much every time.
And do you know WHY these people keep getting elected to office, despite the hatred of them from independents and moderates, despite the lack of favor they hold among people registered to their own political party? Because ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE think, “Well, if I vote third party I’ll be throwing my vote away.”
Obama got elected by popular acclaim because the perception was that he was all but an independent running on a Democrat ticket. The majority of Americans don’t WANT hard-line Democrats or hard-line Republicans in office. They just think those’re the only two choices they’re being offered. So to hell with that. Vote for the person you actually WANT in office.
But yeah, for God’s sake, do vote.