2012 Election Over, Same Problems, No Solutions

Last night I tuned in briefly to watch the Presidential election results knowing full well that my candidate would not win.

Not because I had voted for Mitt Romney.

For the eighth consecutive Presidential election I voted for a 3rd party candidate.  In this case, Libertarian, Gary Johnson.

While watching the results come in a friend called me and asked who I had voted for. When I told her Gary Johnson, she thought I was kidding and then realized that I was serious and quite sternly reprimanded me by saying, “why did you waste your vote?”

I replied,  “I believe that of the 120 million who voted, more than half voted not for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but against them.”

“Gary Johnson was the candidate who presented the best ideas, that’s why I voted for him. I didn’t waste my vote.”

This logic did not persuade my friend. She insisted my logic was faulty and I had wasted my vote.

What would happen if more people voted for the person they felt would do the best job, instead of voting for a candidate they didn’t really like?

Maybe we’d have more people in government representing “we the people.”

 

 

 

 

 

Over one million people agreed with my assessment and voted for Gary Johnson. Another 396,000 people voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Over 200,000 votes were cast for others.  One day, hopefully, the United States will have more than two parties. Instead of complaining about sending the same political hacks back to office, maybe people should wake up and do something about changing the status quo.

I didn’t waste my vote. Did you?