If you're anything like me, you aren't particularly thrilled by the two major party candidates for president this election cycle. Donald Trump is a racist, sexist, neo-fascist, (I'm not biased at all, promise) and while I don't think Hillary Clinton is on that same level of terrible, she's certainly not my ideal candidate. Fortunately for me, third-party candidates are out in full force this year, backed by huge grassroots efforts and bolstered by the fact that the two mainstream candidates are pretty much the worst.
If you’ve decided that Gary Johnson or Jill Stein is the right candidate for you, you’ve likely received your fair share of comments like, “A vote for a third party candidate is a waste," or “A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump," or other variations. Are these statements true, or just rhetoric spouted by the mainstream parties to keep the third-parties quiet? The reality is that it's a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
So why is it that third-party candidates have had such little success in the American political system? While things like media bias and voter entrenchment play a role, in the end it really comes down to gerrymandering, first-past-the-post voting (FPTP) and the electoral college.
Gerrymandering and FPTP go hand in hand in the shit soup that is the American election process. With FPTP, everyone gets one vote, you vote for whoever you think is least terrible, a simple majority wins. Pretty simple concept. But also deeply flawed. In FPTP, the only votes that really matter are the votes that go to the two most popular candidates. The United States uses single-member districts, with each district getting one seat. Even if an election results in a 40-30-30 split, the 40 wins, gets all of the representation, and the rest of the votes get nothing.
This leads to both minority rule, and defensive voting (voting against the candidate you dislike most, instead of for the candidate you actually want). The problem is only exacerbated when the ruling party in a state comes along and gerrymanders districts in their favor, which leads to districts that look like this, and essentially silences the voices of a huge number of voters. Unless this winner-take-all, two candidates skewed voting system is changed to something like the alternative vote, third party candidates will be at a severe disadvantage. And good luck lobbying your likely Democrat or Republican candidate for that kind of change.
On top of first past the post voting, the presidential election has even another layer of terrible: the Electoral College. The College is a relic of a bygone era, where votes couldn’t be tallied instantly across thousands of miles, and politicians didn’t want to trust the unwashed masses with too much power. Not only is the system no longer necessary for modern elections, it actively alters the results of elections. In order to protect the power of the states (because that has a history of going well), smaller states were given proportionally more electoral votes than they deserve based on their size, meaning the vote of someone from Montana is actually worth more than the vote of someone from California.
Taken to the extreme, if a candidate were to appeal to smaller states, they could win the presidential election while only taking home 22 percent of the popular vote. This imbalance also has the consequence of giving rural voters, which tend to be more Conservative, more influence than urban voters, who skew liberal. And like Congressional seats, electoral votes are winner take all. If your district comes down to a 51–49 split, then congratulations 49 percent, your vote accomplishes literally nothing. If you want to vote third party, the chance that your candidate wins even a few districts is incredibly slim, even if they can achieve respectable popular vote numbers.
In this heavily two-party favored system, the majority of the states are pretty much already decided by the time the general starts. The last time Texas voted Democrat was in 1976, and the last time a Republican won New York was in 1988. The last time a third-party candidate won anything at all was George Wallace in 1968, and he won on the back of a pro-segregation platform. Unfortunately, unless you live in one of the 11 “battlegrounds," or undecided, states, your vote might not matter a whole lot.
Though I’m sure I haven’t helped in brightening your third-party spirits, don’t be discouraged! I say, if you lean conservative in a state that always goes left, or you’re a bleeding heart liberal in the deep south, use your vote to send a message. The only was the two-party system can be challenged is the rise of strong alternatives and the only way we see more alternatives is if they can shine during the election. Change doesn’t come in one election cycle. Third-party candidates are polling higher than almost ever before. If you want to see change, use your vote to build momentum for the coming years. Chances are that’s the best work it will have the opportunity to do.
