In discussions about the upcoming election I have noticed a trend among my more politically-informed friends. They assert that they would vote for an independent candidate rather than choosing between the mainstay political parties. They have encouraged me to do the same, but I am skeptical.
I don’t want to get into specific policy arguments in this column because I feel that both parties are still clutching and grasping for platforms that their respective candidates can agree on, but I do know that putting my vote toward a candidate with no chance of winning is not going to yield the desired results.
Voting independent would seem to be a good way to slowly take power away from the major parties and create another voice. This is the logic behind the small-party coalitions that govern Germany and its fellow European states. However, what the American independent voter must come to terms with is that the statement of displeasure he or she is making with an independent vote will not be heard in this country. In fact, that vote will count as a vote against both major parties — including whichever one would have made that voter happier.
For example, I wonder how the people who voted for Ralph Nader in Florida or New Hampshire in 2000 feel at this juncture. Their individual political statements, when combined, lost the election for Al Gore, who certainly would have been their choice if they had picked between the major parties. Now not only has every Green Party initiative been flattened completely, but the nation has gone in the opposite direction because of Bush’s administration.
It is imperative that every independent voter acknowledge that they are wasting their vote in the system as it currently stands. However, that does not by any means imply that the non-affiliated voice does not have a role in politics. It is true that every great humanitarian victory in the history of American politics started out as a radical political movement independent of the two-party system, but it is also true that every one of those victories was won while a major party was in power — whether it be Women’s Suffrage or Civil Rights.
Barack Obama argued long before he was a presidential candidate that we have to change the nature of political discourse in this nation if we want to improve our station. That is where the independent voice comes in.
Speak out relentlessly against the major centers of power in this country, but do so with the confidence that if your ideas are powerful and the nation can truly benefit from them, they will be brought into the fold of major-party politics eventually. Speak out with the knowledge that radical changes are enacted through compromise and persistence on the part of the radicals, not the cowardly submission of the powers that stand.
There is no doubt that the election system in this country is inherently flawed. The Hegelian manner in which politicians argue is yet to produce any kind of synthesis, even on issues like education and health care — the basic building blocks of a sustainable society. The answer lies somewhere in between the major parties, not above them. Voting independent does not make the voter part of the process any more than choosing to walk the streets naked makes you part of the fashion world.
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