Oh god. This is a particularly ugly can of worms I'm opening up.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get to the topic at hand.

The system is broken. You know this and I know this. There is a crapload wrong with our voting process, but the only way it's going to change is if we play the game. It might feel worthless trying to vote, knowing that the Electoral College is who ultimately decides, but remember the dynamic of power. The government depends on us because a politician's goal is to be re-elected. We choose our mayor, governor, and senator. As useless as it may seem, we do have a lot of influence. If you want to change things, you have to vote. Play by their rules to influence the change on their rules.

I'm not going to say that if you vote third party you are wasting or throwing away your vote. A vote is a building block for the pedestal we build for our president, if you'll pardon the schmaltzy metaphor.

But you and I both know that a third party has never successfully won a presidential election and that's not going to change just because the top two contenders for president act like it's an audition for “Abbott and Costello Run for Office.” Nobody wants to vote for either of these morally bankrupt individuals. Voting for a third party is the option to vote for neither parties, refusing the binary choice.

I understand that. I respect the hell out of it. I really do. But I'm sorry, it doesn't work like that. As big as the Libertarian party is, it doesn't have near the support of either the Democratic party or the Republican party and that isn't going to change any time soon. There is a lot at stake. The upcoming election will determine how our tension with Russia is going to affect the world, our crippled economy, women's rights, how other countries see us, the state of the environment, and what is going to happen to Syria and the children there living in fear of ISIS.

There is far too much at stake right now to make a protest vote. A third party candidate getting a lot of votes is not going to change the way the media or the government treat a third party. Like “South Park” once generously demonstrated, it always comes down to two lousy choices. This is just the way it works.

Maybe you consider both candidates equally evil, but a lot of people are just voting because they don't want to vote Democrat and think that the Republican party doesn't have a chance. Everyone is assuming Hillary is going to win, but do you seriously think that trump doesn't have enough backing to rival that? Even after every stupid thing the man has done, how many times he goes to court for raping a thirteen year old girl he has enough frustrated Conservatives willing to ignore everything he's ever said or done just so that Hillary doesn't win. If you're voting third party because you think a clown like that can't win, you'd be surprised how often an  under qualified group of rich asshats nobody likes get elected and ruins everything.

I'll also take a shot in the dark and say that Orange Hitler isn't an agent meant to make us vote for Hillary. If the government wants to make us vote one way or the other, it seems like it'd be far less expensive and esoteric to just say that Hillary won regardless of who she's up against. Not only that, but this election has seen trump painted as a rapist, misogynist, racist, fascist, and homophobe who can't decide how many times he's been in bed with the people who want to bomb us. If he's doing this voluntarily, then he's quite the martyr for the Clintons if the millions he's spent on the campaign weren't enough.

Unlike what many of his followers will say, it's becoming more and more obvious that he's not some rebel out to defeat the bureaucrats with his headstrong attitude and instead is just a rich asshole on a campaign for his own ego who has absolutely no idea what he's doing. Being blatantly racist as some "clever ploy" to get media attention is the most idiotic thing anyone has ever suggested. Maybe when a jerk says something that a jerk would say, it's because he's a jerk. And the only thing a wall is going to do is cost us more money than we have and put more conflict between Mexico and the US.

No, Hillary isn't a saint either. A lot of her supposed  crimes were  overblown by the right wing or outright lies, her biggest crime as of yet seems to be having an e-mail account outside of work. I'd say that the real reason to be mad at her is that she most likely tried to hush the victim of her husband's sexual assault.

Why would anyone vote for these people? Because no matter what opinion you're under, you'll find that one is definitely worse than the other and the only way to combat that is to vote for their rival. Your choice is A or B.

It sucks. It sucks a lot. There's no real winning in this election, only the effort not to lose too hard. Essentially, we get to choose which criminal gets to screw us over and hope they do it gently. As you can probably already tell, I'm in with the left this election because even if she embodies all that's wrong with politics at least Hillary has a platform I can get behind and is on friendlier terms with our allies, all of whom we're going to need in the upcoming years. Maybe you disagree with me, I don't care. But a third party vote isn't going to change a thing.