I was recently doing a little research on the presidential candidates, as I have made it my goal to develop a better understanding of politics and develop my views on specific issues prior to the upcoming election.
On this particular occasion, I was looking at a table that compared the views of the four main candidates: Donald Trump (republican), Hillary Clinton (democrat), Jill Stein (green), and Gary Johnson (libertarian). To my surprise, quite a few of my views aligned with that of the libertarian party candidate, Johnson. To this I asked: what even is a libertarian? According to the Libertarian Party website, this is the answer to my question:
“Libertarians believe in, and pursue, personal freedom while maintaining personal responsibility… Libertarians strongly oppose any government interfering in their personal, family and business decisions. Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another. In a nutshell, we are advocates for a smaller government, lower taxes, and more freedom.”
This sounds pretty fair to me, so why don’t more people pay attention to this third party? I am sure that if I went around expressing these libertarian views to my friends, I would get a lot of questioning looks, as well as some backlash. But the truth is, I agree with many aspects of the libertarian party. And the democratic party. And the republican party. If I can’t pick just one, then how do I label myself during this political event?
I understand that we have political parties to better classify our beliefs, and we all know how much America loves their labels. We’ve been taught to label ourselves our entire life: boy, girl, jock, geek, middle class, poor, black, white. The list can literally go on forever, but I digress.
Classically, we split ourselves into two political parties: democrats and republicans. In many cases, people blindly align themselves with one of these two sides before learning about all the parties. Basically, this automatically eliminates any third party candidate from standing a chance in the presidential elections—we choose not to pay attention to them based on this one label.
Bear with me.
What if we eliminated all political party labels? Imagine a group of people running for president—at no point are we told their political affiliation, so we have to actually listen to what they say in order to determine the best candidate. There is no bias. There is no voting for someone simply because they align themselves with your party. This method would require the citizens of the United States to actually pay thorough attention to each candidate instead of blindly checking a box once November rolls around.
No democrats. No republicans. No third parties. All candidates start on an equal playing field.
Would your choice change if you became an educated, unbiased voter?
