Basically, you lost already, Jessica, so you can choose from among your remaining options.
Picking a third party candidate can be smart if you don’t really care who wins. By picking the third party, you send a signal to both other parties. But… be careful, because it is the middle finger you are using then. If one of the two candidates are too horrible for you to consider, then vote against the person you hate the most.
That’s our system: we vote either for the one we love or we vote against the one we hate. But you can give yourself (a tiny bit of) power:
The way to empower yourself is by taking your power away from the two parties (and vote for the most popular third party, it really doesn’t matter if that is the Green Party or the Libertarian Party candidate). Pick the one with potentially the largest number of votes to thicken that middle finger.
Again, be careful. If you live in a swing state, your vote does count, either left, right, or up in the air. In swing states it matters, and you will know by the barrage of commercials on TV if you live in a swing state or not. The sicker you are of these commercials, the more you know you live in a swing state.
But if you live in a state where the outcome is already known beforehand (because a large majority picks either Trump or Biden), then you can definitively vote for a third party candidate and empower your one vote.
Remove your anti-vote from the camp that does not do anyone any good anyway because the outcome is already known. Or, remove your pro-vote from the camp that does not matter anyway because the outcome is already known.
By picking a third party candidate (in non-swing states) you are sending a message, a one-person strong message to the political establishment.
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Yes, we have a dumb system. We vote thumb up or thumb down, or we stay home (many of us do). There are better systems out there.
If you want to change the system, there is an option, but it is the first step of two (or three) steps only:
The US Constitution is on our side with that first step. I hope you consider reading the article and see how your frustration about Biden and Trump can turn into some real change.
Changing the top of a system is done by toppling. But it is at the bottom that effective changes are first implemented.
Lastly, here’s data of 50+ years of people coming out to vote in various nations. Yellow indicates winner-take-all system, green is full representation system, blue is a mix of the two.
Of course, we’re last. If you voted four times in a row and you didn’t get represented by your pick, would you go out again and vote? People aren’t stupid.
But now you know you can go out, vote, and use the middle finger wisely.
