For most of my voting life, people have been urging me to vote third party. The two-party system is broken, they say, and we have to send a message that we’re not happy with our flawed choices. It’s degrading to make ourselves vote for one or the other of these absurdly bad candidates, they say. We’re sending a signal that we’re ready for a change.
I have always had some sympathy for this argument. As I’ve said several times, I can’t remember the last time I actually voted for someone. It’s always been a “hold your nose and check the box for the one who will do the least damage” kind of situation. I felt like it would be nice to stand on my principles and vote third party, but this current election is just too important. The stakes are too high, and I really can’t afford the luxury of throwing away my vote.
Today I asked myself: What have I been doing, then?
Here’s my voting record, since people seem to care:
1992: George H.W. Bush
1996: Bob Dole
2000: George W. Bush
2004: George W. Bush
2008: John McCain
2012: Mitt Romney
2016: Hillary Clinton
2020: Joe Biden
I was never excited about any of the republicans I voted for, but when Trump came along, I held my nose so hard I almost broke it, voting for Hillary so she could stop him. She lost. I held my nose and voted for Biden in 2020, and he won. And I’ve spent the last few weeks gloomily preparing myself to vote for Kamala Harris, because while I don’t exactly hope she wins, I sure don’t want Trump to win. Don’t want to throw my vote away.
Then I asked myself, Have I not been throwing my vote away? I don’t even mean that my person doesn’t win every time. I mean that even when I win, I lose. Biden didn’t stop Trumpism at all, and he didn’t stop Trump himself for long. (That’s not entirely Biden’s fault, but I’m hard pressed to see how he’s earned credit for any wins, either.)
And every time I vote this way, I stray a little further from even understanding clearly what I believe, or from feeling like it’s important, because my standards keep shifting out of sheer self-preservation. You have to change your standards if you don’t want to go insane. You have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, right?
But we have noses for a reason. They’re a gift from God to deter us from consuming things that will hurt us. Plug your nose long enough, you forget what noses are for.
Where are we now? Nobody feels any pressure to represent me in any way. Both side perpetually crap on me and then stand back and wait for a thank-you. Even when I do my duty and stop the Great Evil from landing, all it does it put more wind in its sails. If anything, Trumpism, with its bloodthirsty strutting imbecility is more pervasive and more mainstreamed than it was four or eight years ago. Doing my duty and voting for Biden didn’t help. (Voting for Trump also wouldn’t have helped, if you think I’m suggesting some kind of “Let the worst happen and let people learn from their mistakes” strategy.)
When the republicans endorse something I support, they do it in such a backwards, revolting way that I want to kick my own ass for being in the same room with them; and when the democrats endorse something I support, they do it so limply and incompetently that I can barely bring myself to look at them. And then they both spend the rest of their time doing dangerous and depraved things that I hate.
Maybe the worst thing of all, I’m used to it. I no longer expect anything different.
I have been throwing my vote away.
I don’t want to do it anymore! Before the next president is sworn in, I’ll be fifty years old, and I’m sick to death of being told I must do things that I know are stupid and wrong, and that I don’t think will work. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to do it anymore.
So, I’m voting American Solidarity Party. They seem to be aligned with Catholic social teaching, including in ways that will annoy both democrats and republicans. They’re not libertarians, whose platform always gets distilled down to weed and underage girls. They’re nowhere near as flaky and unprofessional as they were when they first appeared (and their logo is better, too). I can’t think of a single reason not to vote for them, so that’s what I’m going to do.
People keep lamenting how polarized the country has become, and then they go ahead and say, “Well, I have to vote this way or that way, because these are the choices in front of me.” But where do those choices come from? They come from us, from how we vote. Keep doing something that you can clearly see isn’t working, and it really does become your fault. And if you want to argue that individual voters don’t really make a difference, then you’re just arguing against voting (which is also something I considered).
But I’ll say it again: I hate where we are, and I see very clearly that the way I’ve been voting has helped get us here. The left doesn’t care about me, the right doesn’t care about me, and voting to stop the left or the right doesn’t work. How I’ve voting has not served me at all. I am all done with being told I must do things that work against me. This time, I’m going to walk out of the voting booth feeling like a human being instead of a used tissue.
Will it change things? Will we ever have a truly competitive third party who even goes so far as to be invited to debates, never mind have a shot at winning the presidency? Who knows? Not this election, or any of the next several elections.
But besides voting, the other thing I have on my calendar for this fall is to plant bulbs. Crouch there in the cold, dig a little hole, bury the bulb, and walk away. We do thankless work now so that good may possibly come of it later. I wish a massive group of people had started voting third party back in 1992, to break the back of the two party system; but the next best thing is to start doing it now.
And maybe someday, someone who isn’t like Harris and isn’t like Trump will run and win. Maybe! Don’t tell me, in 2024, that such a thing could never happen. The last decade has been one thing that could never happen after another, happening.
For the very first time, I am going to vote in a way that lets me feel a little bit of hope for the future, and brings me peace for now. I’m not throwing my vote away. I’m burying it, and maybe at some point it will even bloom.
Image: solidarity-party.org, via wikipedia, Fair use
Note: As you no doubt noticed, I screwed up the election timelines! Sorry about that. What can I say, I was writing fast.
I truly love your articles. I respect your opinions. You often make me laugh out loud. But you may as well vote for Trump,because like every third party vote it will hand him the office he has disgraced. You do not strike me as vain, and yet yours will be a vanity vote. If you don’t think so, think back to George Bush and ask yourself if Iraq and Afghanistan would look different today if votes for Nader hadn’t doomed Al Gore. Keep writing please. And please reconsider.
Sounds like a plan. Sort of like the plan of those who voted for the Bavarian People’s Party, a solidly Catholic party, when Hitler came to power. What happened to the BPP? Oh, they became part of the Gleichschaltung (Nazification process), but those members who were imprisoned by the Nazis were released. So there’s that.
Yes, I believe this election is that serious.
Yeah, it really doesn’t feel like this all started in 2016, does it?
We went right from Obama to Trump!
Quite a shocking change.
It’s hard for me to forgot because I got married that year.
I was in California in 2016, so I wrote in a different candidate. If I could do it again, I would just vote for Hillary Clinton.
If you’re interested in a way of voting where your ballot isn’t always just thrown away when you don’t vote for the winner, might I suggest supporting Represent.US and their advocacy for voting reforms: https://represent.us/
Especially in the context of third-party voting, this sort of reform is the best current chance of that becoming a practical possibility. So this goes double for anyone who supports third parties in American politics.
I was evangelical before I converted to Catholicism. Voting Republican was supposedly the Christian thing to do. Then they embraced Trump. I finally began doing the work to see what each party actually stood for. I realized that the Democratic party is more pro-life in every way other than abortion. The Republican abortion bans are not even pro-life because they are preventing people from getting proper miscarriage care, in some cases resulting in loss of fertility and loss of life. Biden is a decent man who believed he could stop Trumpism, not in a head-to-head match, but by showing the American people that the government can work for everyone. He accomplished so much, but people refuse to see it. When presented with facts and data, they refuse to believe it because they are caught up in tribalism. Now Harris is being attacked based on race and gender. She has presented detailed policy plans including 82 pages of economic policy, but people still say it’s not enough. On the few issues that Trump has presented detailed plans, they are horrifying. Dictator on day 1, deportations will be a bloody story, more tax cuts for billionaires. He actively harms people by lying about immigrants and FEMA. He mocks and insults people because he is not intelligent enough to argue on policy. I will enthusiastically vote for Harris.
I agree. I stopped voting Republican in 2016 and after the absolute cowardice shown in the aftermath of January 6th, they need to be sent a clear message.
And after seeing the healthcare disaster for women with the overturning of Roe, I will never allow them to hold abortion over my head again as well. I too have come to the conclusion that democratic policies are more pro-life overall and am enthusiastic to vote for Harris.
ASP supporter since 2016 here.
I’m with you and doing the same.
I definitely voted third party (wrote in Ron Paul) when Mitt Romney was running. As God is my witness I cannot remember if my husband talked me into John McCain or if I ended up writing in Ron Paul. He doesn’t remember what I did either.
This time, I’m voting for Trump. I think we need to end the Fed, which he won’t do. I think we need to rein in government spending, which I also think he won’t do. I think a central bank digital currency (which the Dems favor) will give the federal government ridiculously unfettered terrifying power over us. Trump is less likely to thrust a CBDC upon us and has gone on record that he won’t implement one. Also, during his four years he kept us out of new wars for which the industrial war complex (both D&R) hates him. Finally, I see our first and second amendment rights being eroded every single day under liberal judges. And I generally like the judges and agency leaders Trump appointed last time around.
Yeah, I wish he would slash federal spending and the deficit, because at these levels, I don’t think we can last long as a nation, but Ron Paul is too old write in, so Trump it is.
Excellent piece. I’ve been voting ASP since 2016 for similar reasons. This piece makes me think of the JJ Heller song “Gardening.”
Plus, voting ASP means you get to vote for an NFP instructor for VP, which is not something I thought I’d ever get to do, but I’m glad of it.
Long, long, LONG time fan: was reading your work back on Faith and Family LIVE when I was a teenager; and now I’m state coordinator for the ASP in Arizona: so I am 🤩🤩🥳🥳🥳❕️
I used to love Faith&Family, especially Simcha’s articles! (I, however, was not a teenager at the time!)
Paragraph #3: you indicated that you voted for Biden in both 2016 and 2020. I don’t think he ran in 2016; that was Hilary Clinton against Trump.
Living in a blue state that has never come close to being red or even purple, my vote really counts for nothing. So I’m writing in Mike Pence. Mainly because I don’t want to endorse either Harris or Trump, and as I said, my vote will have zero impact on this election. Harris has a brain, can speak, and is sane, but I detest her platform, especially her aggressive support of abortion. Trump is an insane insurrectionist with dementia who can’t formulate a sentence and who never should have been allowed on the ballot after he committed treason on January 6th. If I lived in a swing state, I might hold my nose to vote for one of them, but thankfully I’m off the hook.
Forgot to mention that while Trump isn’t as militantly pro-abortion as Harris, he is certainly not pro-life. I’m happy that he appointed judges who overturned Roe, but some of those justices are of questionable moral character, which doesn’t go too far toward the conversion of hearts that is essential to reducing abortions.
Interesting post.
I plan to vote for Harris. Not simply to stop Trump and his ilk from returning to office, but also because a lot of it comes down to plain and simple tribalism. Which I think is a motivator for a lot of people, including yourself, Simcha.
I am a Catholic, yes, but I am also a black woman, and I think it would be great to see a black woman in office.
Tribalism is most definitely what’s keeping the cult of Trump alive, and I heavily suspect that tribalism is the reason why I haven’t seen a single post or article by you denouncing what’s currently going on in Gaza. So we’re all guilty of it.
I clicked the link you posted to that article you wrote about Harris snubbing an invitation to the Al Smith dinner. I have been a Catholic my entire life and I’ve never heard about it before, but the minute I read that it was a dinner honoring the first Catholic to ever run for president in 1946, my first thought wasn’t “Yay, a Catholic running for office”, instead my first thought was “1946? Hmm I wonder what his thoughts were on segregation”. Since we’re all aware that the American Catholic Church not only participated in that, but even encouraged it within its very own walls of the Church. (e.g. African Americans were required to sit in the back during Mass and receive the Eucharist only after whites had).
I will be voting for Harris for completely different reasons from you and that’s fine. You’re not a Catholic of color and you probably haven’t noticed or as sensitive to the racial attacks on Harris as I am. The constant comments about her intelligence or her competence in serving in office despite her impressive resume as U.S. Senator and Attorney General, or how in the article you linked to about the Al Smith dinner some jerk stated, and this is a direct quote: “Her less-than-average ability to think quickly on her feet surely must have been a factor in her taking a pass” and “The event would play to Trump’s strengths” as if somehow Trump’s rambling nonsense is on par with a coherent and educated woman with actual experience in politics.
Anywho, have a blessed week!
After years of always voting (R), I finally quit in 2016. I’ve voted ASP ever since and am now the state chair in Colorado. Welcome to the club!
I have a similar voting record and the same feelings and am planning to do the same as you. Yes, I know all the talk about how “one vote can change everything, so you better be really careful how you vote,” which feels like “step on a crack and break your mother’s back,” if you know what I mean, if it means your one vote was the one that brought doom and destruction. Whoever wins won’t change peoples’ hearts and minds as far as I can see. Voting one way or the other right now doesn’t seem as if it will change much that I care about the most either, so I am going to go with the party that most nearly represents me. I’m tired of feeling sick to the stomach about voting. Who knows – there aren’t any Whigs anymore, so parties do come and go…
Right there with you. We even got an ASP yard sign. Maybe someone will see it and think “it doesn’t have to be this way”.