Why "Waste" Your Vote on a Fringe Group?

Why should anyone waste their vote on a “fringe” political group?

Let me start with a side note before getting to the answer.

It is this: In a proper democracy no candidate would be allowed to win an election with less than a majority of the votes. Voting for the candidate you really want could never “spoil” an election. When no one gets a majority there should be run-off elections. So if your top choice comes in third, and no one gets over 50% of the vote, you would get to vote for your second choice. The Green Party advocates Instant Runoff Voting, a system in which you would get to rank your choices on the original ballot.

The 2 largest parties do not want run-off elections. This is precisely because run-off elections allow the voters to vote for 3rd Party candidates without the fear of “spoiling”. When voters lose the fear of “spoiling” we will discover that some 3rd Parties have a much larger base of support than previously thought, and many of those candidates will actually win outright.

But people should vote for the candidates and platforms they really want right now, despite the fact that “spoiling” has been institutionalized by the major parties. And here is why:

Over the past 25 years or so the Democratic Party has moved far to the right, deserting their traditional constituents such as labor, minorities, women, environmentalists, etc. They have done this because of the corporate take-over of American politics. In other words, they did it for the campaign money.

That is why they did it, but why did they get away with it? They have gotten away with it because their traditional constituents continue to vote for them despite their pro-corporation record. The unions continue to support them despite the Democrats’ support for trade agreements such as NAFTA. The environmentalists continue to support them despite their lowering of pollution standards. Women and minorities continue to support them despite a continued lack of parity in the workplace. The poor continue to support them despite the dismantling of the safety net under the Clinton administration while “corporate” welfare continued to flourish. Consumers continue to support them despite their deregulation of countless industries.

And so on, all because the Republicans are viewed as worse. So now we have 2 parties serving the corporations.

Those people who automatically pull the Democratic Party lever are condoning the Democrats’ continued movement to the right. The only way to end the major parties’ embracement of the corporate state is to STOP voting for them. Especially to stop supporting those incumbent politicians who have grown accustomed to the corporate money.

Only when and if the Democrats suffer major setbacks will they change. If the Democrats start losing elections because a significant percentage of their traditional base votes Green then maybe, just maybe, the party will backtrack, compromise, make concessions, put forth better candidates the next time around, and gradually return to a mode of actually helping their traditional constituents instead of cowtowing to their corporate masters.

Charles Woodrow
Candidate for Gloucester County Freeholder