When a Twitter user with an anime profile picture assures you he’s a top-in-his class Navy Seal sniper with a background in gorilla warfare, you don’t take him at animated-face value. You can’t. Survival on the internet depends on understanding that, at any given point, some lumpy percentage of users are trolling for a reaction.

In the real world, when we learn that an appropriately lumpy percentage of voters plan on throwing their vote not to either the Democrat or Republican, but instead to one of any number of third party candidates, we assume their decisions are informed by a faulty but coherent political ideology that can be hammered out through spirited debate.

We’re wrong.

It’s true that in other countries, legislative systems populated by more than two central parties not only survive but thrive, often outperforming the legislative potential of our own prehistoric body of geriatric filibusters. But these countries also have systems in place that incentivize or at least welcome these democratic third wheelers. Ours does not.

I’ve already written at length about why third parties don’t really work in our system. I wish it weren’t the case, and we should change it. But all of this isn’t worth unpacking here, because my point doesn’t require it. Rather, my point is that people who vote for a third party candidate aren’t trying to help them win; they’re trying to send a message. And that message is fucking annoying.

In this election, this nail-bitingly close, anxious bezoar of an election, the loudest and most notable group of third party threateners are those proudly voting for Jill Stein and her Green Party as a means of protesting the Biden administration’s role in furthering the Israeli War against Hamas, a conflict that’s generated tens of thousands of civilian deaths thus far. The scale and pace of this murder campaign is horrific, and you’ll never find me standing against anyone for speaking out on it.

It’s also fair to criticize the role of President Biden and, to some degree, Vice President Harris. By continuing to provide Israel with a steady stream of weaponry, our government is supplying the slaughter. We are, in part, responsible. And it’s righteous to want to stand up and break that responsibility.

But voting against Harris won’t accomplish that. Every reputable poll conducted since Vice President Harris’s entry into the 2024 race has predicted a tight contest between her and President Donald Trump. To say that a candidate like Stein is in distant third still doesn’t do it justice. She and her co-third party candidates cap out in the low-single digits. There is absolutely no chance they will win today. If both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris spontaneously explode, there is no chance any of these also-rans win today or in January when votes are certified.

But, of course, their voters know that. This is, after all, a protest vote meant more to hurt the candidate they’re not voting for than help the one they are. But if their goal is to take votes away from Harris, the effective end of these actions is to push the election ever so slightly toward her opponent, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, to continue this specific example, has made it incredibly clear that he would not only continue U.S. military aid to Israel but expand it. He has expressed carte blanche approval for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership. When he was President, before any of this had bubbled beyond the constant near-boil of Israeli-Palestinian relations, Trump ordered that the United States Embassy to Israel be moved from its long-standing location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a contentious move due to Palestinian claims on that city.

Whatever Kamala Harris would be for Gaza, Trump would be worse. And I know that third-party voters are tired of this logic, indignant against it. I think many of us are. Voting for the lesser of two evils each and every year is exhausting. But it’s how our system works.

I’m tempted to leave this at that, to make the argument that voting for whichever of the two central candidates is better is not only the smart option, but the adult option. That growing up means recognizing the limitations of our system and endeavoring to use it to the best of our ability rather than acting according to some imagined utopia.

But I know that’s also all too similar to the arguments these people have already heard. They need to grow up and vote Democrat. Clearly this line of reasoning hasn’t worked.

I don’t suspect that mine will work either. I opened this article with a pretty belligerent attitude and I’ve continued to stubbornly refuse quarter. But this article isn’t for them, it’s for the rest of us.

The point of all this isn’t that we have to resign ourselves to being trampled by a broken system each and every election cycle. The spirit that inspires these third party voters is a commendable one: a wish to fix what is broken rather than tiptoeing around it ad infinitum. But if this is the goal they’re running with, they’re doing a bad job of fulfilling it.

Voting third party doesn’t fix anything because it doesn’t do anything, at least not what they want. Denying the Democrats an electoral victory won’t compel them to make change because they won’t be in power to enact it. And it’ll move the needle even less for Republicans, who are all the more likely to feel empowered by a fractured left wing.

The real path to change is more boring, a path followed from the grass-roots up that seeks to alter the system rather than attempt to force a door being pushed from both sides to instead open upward.

You didn’t need to read all of this. This is obvious. I get it. You get it. They get it. If they’re still standing their ground, it’s not a cogent difference in philosophy, it’s a need for attention.

We don’t feed trolls. 

Tagged Elections, third parties