"You're throwing away your vote if you vote for a third party! You have to choose: Clinton or Trump?"
Welcome to America, the place where a democracy, instead of meaning that the people vote in our leadership, means that you must vote for a Republican or Democrat. In theory, sure, we could write in anyone that we want to. But, as we've been hearing over and over again this election year, because America is so dominated by the two party system, voting outside of that system is a waste of a vote.
Is no one else seeing something wrong with this? For heaven's sake, we have television competitions where people text in votes for contestants every week. And we don't hear them saying 'Oh, you can only vote for these two. The other competitors are good, but these are the two that have been chosen for voting.' You get to choose whoever you want, even if they aren't the most popular choice. And you don't get shamed for having your own opinion. People don't tell you that you're throwing away your vote. They tell you that you're doing your part in voting for the person that you believe in.
Don't even get me started with the electoral college. Whoever gets the majority in the states gets the electoral votes for the state, in most cases. And what happens to everyone else's ballot? They get thrown away. They weren't the majority so they weren't important.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
We need to change the way that we think about elections, and maybe that will be the first step in changing how things work around here.
Why do we only need to have one candidate from each party in the first place? I understand how it can be beneficial to have all of the votes flowing towards one person, but that also limits us to a narrow mindset of 'they are from x party, we must vote for them'. We've stopped looking at people and started looking at parties, and that isn't how it's supposed to be. You should not be able to say that you're voting in one direction, but know absolutely nothing about that person's ideals. At least if we had multiple from each party, we'd be more inclined to look at the individuals within the party.
Additionally, why are we still doing this whole 'electoral college' thing? Why aren't we adding up votes from those who care enough to vote, and seeing who has the most? California has 55 electoral votes. Delaware has three. Essentially, when you do the math, this is saying that even if every single person in Delaware voted and only 10% of California voted, Delaware's votes still wouldn't be as important. One thousand people from one state don't matter as much as one thousand people in another. Why can't one thousand people just be one thousand people?
Why is it that the government can get pretty much everyone to file their taxes, but we can't get some people to vote because in certain cases, there are loopholes? Why is it that people can explain every detail of a viral video about cats that continues to pop up on social media, but no one can tell me information on our third party candidates because they aren't getting any coverage? Why do we have such a bias in our media that the news channels have become conservative and liberal; why can't our news just be news?
Why is America absolutely failing at being a fair, balanced, democracy?
I don't know how we ended up where we are, and I don't know what I can do to change it other than by getting a conversation started. But something has to give. Not only are the way things are running dividing us as a nation in the worst of ways, but we're getting back to a place where it feels like the individual doesn't matter. And considering the word democracy is literally defined as 'a system of government by the whole population,' I believe that the entire population should get a real chance at having a voice.
