For most of my voting life, people have been urging me to vote third party. The two-party system is broken, they say, and we have to send a message that we’re not happy with our flawed choices. It’s degrading to make ourselves vote for one or the other of these absurdly bad candidates, they say. We’re sending a signal that we’re ready for a change.
I have always had some sympathy for this argument. As I’ve said several times, I can’t remember the last time I actually voted for someone. It’s always been a “hold your nose and check the box for the one who will do the least damage” kind of situation. I felt like it would be nice to stand on my principles and vote third party, but this current election is just too important. The stakes are too high, and I really can’t afford the luxury of throwing away my vote.
Today I asked myself: What have I been doing, then?
Here’s my voting record, since people seem to care:
1992: George H.W. Bush
1996: Bob Dole
2000: George W. Bush
2004: George W. Bush
2008: John McCain
2012: Mitt Romney
2016: Hillary Clinton
2020: Joe Biden
I was never excited about any of the republicans I voted for, but when Trump came along, I held my nose so hard I almost broke it, voting for Hillary so she could stop him. She lost. I held my nose and voted for Biden in 2020, and he won. And I’ve spent the last few weeks gloomily preparing myself to vote for Kamala Harris, because while I don’t exactly hope she wins, I sure don’t want Trump to win. Don’t want to throw my vote away.
Then I asked myself, Have I not been throwing my vote away? I don’t even mean that my person doesn’t win every time. I mean that even when I win, I lose. Biden didn’t stop Trumpism at all, and he didn’t stop Trump himself for long. (That’s not entirely Biden’s fault, but I’m hard pressed to see how he’s earned credit for any wins, either.)
And every time I vote this way, I stray a little further from even understanding clearly what I believe, or from feeling like it’s important, because my standards keep shifting out of sheer self-preservation. You have to change your standards if you don’t want to go insane. You have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, right?
But we have noses for a reason. They’re a gift from God to deter us from consuming things that will hurt us. Plug your nose long enough, you forget what noses are for.
Where are we now? Nobody feels any pressure to represent me in any way. Both side perpetually crap on me and then stand back and wait for a thank-you. Even when I do my duty and stop the Great Evil from landing, all it does it put more wind in its sails. If anything, Trumpism, with its bloodthirsty strutting imbecility is more pervasive and more mainstreamed than it was four or eight years ago. Doing my duty and voting for Biden didn’t help. (Voting for Trump also wouldn’t have helped, if you think I’m suggesting some kind of “Let the worst happen and let people learn from their mistakes” strategy.)
When the republicans endorse something I support, they do it in such a backwards, revolting way that I want to kick my own ass for being in the same room with them; and when the democrats endorse something I support, they do it so limply and incompetently that I can barely bring myself to look at them. And then they both spend the rest of their time doing dangerous and depraved things that I hate.
Maybe the worst thing of all, I’m used to it. I no longer expect anything different.
I have been throwing my vote away.
I don’t want to do it anymore! Before the next president is sworn in, I’ll be fifty years old, and I’m sick to death of being told I must do things that I know are stupid and wrong, and that I don’t think will work. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to do it anymore.
So, I’m voting American Solidarity Party. They seem to be aligned with Catholic social teaching, including in ways that will annoy both democrats and republicans. They’re not libertarians, whose platform always gets distilled down to weed and underage girls. They’re nowhere near as flaky and unprofessional as they were when they first appeared (and their logo is better, too). I can’t think of a single reason not to vote for them, so that’s what I’m going to do.
People keep lamenting how polarized the country has become, and then they go ahead and say, “Well, I have to vote this way or that way, because these are the choices in front of me.” But where do those choices come from? They come from us, from how we vote. Keep doing something that you can clearly see isn’t working, and it really does become your fault. And if you want to argue that individual voters don’t really make a difference, then you’re just arguing against voting (which is also something I considered).
But I’ll say it again: I hate where we are, and I see very clearly that the way I’ve been voting has helped get us here. The left doesn’t care about me, the right doesn’t care about me, and voting to stop the left or the right doesn’t work. How I’ve voting has not served me at all. I am all done with being told I must do things that work against me. This time, I’m going to walk out of the voting booth feeling like a human being instead of a used tissue.
Will it change things? Will we ever have a truly competitive third party who even goes so far as to be invited to debates, never mind have a shot at winning the presidency? Who knows? Not this election, or any of the next several elections.
But besides voting, the other thing I have on my calendar for this fall is to plant bulbs. Crouch there in the cold, dig a little hole, bury the bulb, and walk away. We do thankless work now so that good may possibly come of it later. I wish a massive group of people had started voting third party back in 1992, to break the back of the two party system; but the next best thing is to start doing it now.
And maybe someday, someone who isn’t like Harris and isn’t like Trump will run and win. Maybe! Don’t tell me, in 2024, that such a thing could never happen. The last decade has been one thing that could never happen after another, happening.
For the very first time, I am going to vote in a way that lets me feel a little bit of hope for the future, and brings me peace for now. I’m not throwing my vote away. I’m burying it, and maybe at some point it will even bloom.
Image: solidarity-party.org, via wikipedia, Fair use
Note: As you no doubt noticed, I screwed up the election timelines! Sorry about that. What can I say, I was writing fast.