There had been a lot of discussion and debate over the past few months about who to vote for in this upcoming election. There’s even a whole SettleForBiden hashtag trending. The people voting for Trump are loud and if you don’t want to keep him in office, voting third-party does nothing except make you look like an idiot. For the 2016 presidential election, I knew a couple of people who voted for actual third-party candidates, but I’ve also known people who wrote down their friend’s name, and even Harambe, the dead gorilla. They just looked stupid. You don’t want to be that person. Please don’t be a stupid person.
I get that Trump and Biden are not amazing candidates, but the other people who are running will never win for so many reasons (i.e. lack of funding and publicity). The electoral college makes it impossible for independent parties to win. If you want to win a presidential election, you have to win an electoral vote, and third-party candidates just don’t have enough traction to get those. Let’s take a look at the 2016 election: Hillary Clinton got almost 66 million votes, while Donald Trump got 63 million. By popular vote, Clinton should have won because she received 3 million more votes than her opponent. However, because of the electoral college, he got the presidency. If you vote for any other candidate, it’s simply just a waste of a vote. Saying you’re voting third-party isn’t a political stance; you’re jeopardizing the rights of marginalized people.Â
So many people have died and have been separated from their families because of the Trump administration. Countless people died of COVID-19 because of his reckless leadership. Trump encouraged Americans to live recklessly, saying masks did little to protect anyone, and when he did get COVID-19, he received an abundance of high-quality treatment and medication to help him recover while your friends and family died alone because they couldn’t afford adequate healthcare in this terrible capitalist America. Voting third-party means you’ll have that apathetic, racist, compulsive liar stay in the Oval office.Â
Please, please, please do not vote third-party (unless you’re voting in Maine for ranked-choice) because it will just split the blue vote. The electoral college will fail us once again if you vote third-party and we’ll have to see this fascist and idiotic man be in office for four more years. I hate Joe Biden too but we can’t just abolish the two-party system in a matter of weeks. Voting third-party means you’re basically voting for Trump, even if you don’t believe that’s true. I wish we didn’t have to choose between the lesser of two evils because — trust me — I hate Biden too, but I hate Trump even more with a burning passion. I know you might not want to settle for Biden, but voting third-party is basically chasing a dream that you won’t be able to grab just yet, if ever. From the bottom of my heart, and I really mean this — if you vote third-party and Trump wins again, you have absolutely no right to complain about the outcome because you were a part of his success.