In Defense of Third Party Voting

While I am proud that America just voted into office our first African American President, the past election got me thinking about third party candidates. Often if you express interest in a third party candidate, others will tell you that you would be "throwing your vote away".

I disagree.

Some notable third party campaigns:

1904: Eugene V. Debs running for the Socialist Party won 3% of the vote. He ran again in four more election cycles.

1912: After losing the Republican Presidential nomination to William Howard Taft, Teddy Roosevelt created the Progressive Party (Bull Moose Party) and ran for President. Roosevelt won 27.4% of the popular vote and carried six states totaling 88 electoral votes.

1948: Democrat Strom Thurmond (who later switched to the Republican Party) ran on the States Rights Party (Dixiecrats) ticket. In protest of the civil rights act, Thurmond garnered 2.4% of the vote and 39 electoral votes.

1968: Former Democratic Governor of Alabama George Wallace ran on the American Independent Party ticket. Wallace amased 13.5% of the vote and 45 electoral votes. Wallace remains the only third party candidate since 1948 to win a state.

1992: H. Ross Perot received 18.9% of the vote. While he garnered no electoral votes, Perot finished second in three states, ahead of Bill Clinton in Alaska and Utah and ahead of George H. W. Bush in Maine. Perot had the second best third party showing in American history (behind only Teddy Roosevelt in 1912).

2000: Ralph Nader, running on the Green Party ticket, received 2.7% of the vote.

Third party candidates don't exactly have a great track record of winning, but the amount of votes they are able to amass illustrates that there are many people who don't like the main two parties. In 2004, "about 55 million eligible votes were registered Republicans. About 72 million registered Democrats. About 42 million are registered as Independents, under some other minor party or with a "No Party" designation."

One of the problems is people erroneously believing that they would be "throwing a vote away".

Obviously, another large part of the problem is ballot access. You can't vote for someone who isn't on your ballot. But of course, the main two parties want it difficult for anyone else to run. They have a sweet thing going.

Many have claimed that too many people running will be confusing to voters. In the 2003 California recall, 135 people ran, yet newspapers reported that voters did not have trouble finding the candidate they wished to vote for.

Voting shouldn't be about the lesser of two evils. Too often people vote for one party over the other simply because they really don't like the other guy. Who wins there? We all settle for a guy that nobody particularly liked...we just didn't dislike him to the degree we disliked the other guy.

You should vote for who you truly believe in. When you vote where your values and beliefs are, you are never "throwing your vote away". You are participating in Democracy.