My opinion isn’t even unpopular because I don’t have one to begin with. I can’t scroll through any kind of social media feed without seeing something Clinton or Trump-related, and even though my social media is filled with opposing viewpoints, I still don’t have any interest to defend either party.

I grew up in a household of independent voters and my mom and dad never talked politics much. We liked some Democrats and some Republicans — with that being said we’ve lived in cities both heavy left-wing and heavy right-wing of the political spectrum. I’ve always felt in the middle. Not in a moderate state though, just in a I-don’t-really-care-about-politics kind of state.

Now that I’m able to vote, I’m realizing I should probably pay a little bit more attention to the news and media outlets as well as watch some debates. So, this year that’s what I did. I soon came to see that the media pegged ‘crooked Hillary’ as nothing but a ‘liar’ for deleting 32,000 ‘private’ emails. After seeing that information, I became a curious potential voter and rationalized that if there’s bad press about Clinton lying, Trump’s accusations wouldn’t be far behind.

I Googled ‘Trump vs Clinton fact checker’ and, according to Politifact, out of 278 facts that were checked from both candidates (158 from Trump and 120 from Clinton) 65 of Trump’s facts were ‘False’ as opposed to Clinton’s 15. And if that wasn’t bad enough, 30 of Trump’s statements were ‘Pants on Fire’. Meanwhile, Clinton had one.

In no way am I saying Clinton is more honest or reliable. My point is, both of them are not.

I waited for the national convention to hopefully make my political views a little clearer before voting day. There were some solid discussions at both, although the GOP stood out to me a little more, and not necessarily in a good way. Let’s be honest here, could it be more obvious that Melania Trump plagiarized part of Michelle Obama’s past speech?

The best part of that (other than the Tweets comparing the plagiarized speech with writing a term paper at 11:50 when it’s due at 12:00) was that Melania bragged about writing the speech herself with “as little help as possible.” And her husband supported her claims; I mean come on, that has to count for some lost credibility.

So, what the media is trying to tell me is that both candidates are liars. Is that supposed to make voting any easier? This must be why I can’t wrap my head around politics. If I’m being honest here, I thought Trump running for president was a joke at first and I never thought he’d make it this far. Kind of like when Kanye announced he was running for president in 2020, it sounds entertaining in the moment and then you rationalize it and think "I hope he’s kidding." Same for Trump. As for Clinton, I don’t even know enough to make a case for why I like or dislike her; probably because I just don’t care enough.

Living in a Republican voting state who will, for the most part, support anyone running for office who simply isn’t a Democrat, my independent-minded political views don’t matter much — another prime reason why I just don’t care.