Walking the Path Less Traveled

In a few weeks, millions of American citizens will head to the booths to cast their vote for the presidential nomination. I wish I could say that they will head to the booths intending to vote for the candidate that they support, however statistics illustrate that is not the case. The numbers show, after accounting for all those who do and do not participate, that it only takes about 30-32% of the American public to elect a president. Out of that 32%, roughly half vote for what they deem the lesser of two evils. That leaves us with roughly 16% of the People that actually support the elected president. It doesn’t take a statistics major to realize that the current process we have does not work the way it was intended. With only 16% giving their full support, the rest of us make up the majority. In each election, the mainstream media presents us with only two candidates to choose from. The resulting decision comes down to choosing between a democrat and a republican. But what if I told you that there are more than just two candidates to choose from? What if I told you that there are actually four candidates from four different political parties that represent principles that are outside of the status quo that we have become accustomed to over the years run by the Republicrats?

The differences between the Democrats and Republicans are minute when looking at the big picture. They both carry similar strategies on foreign policy, civil liberties, national debt, and the Federal Reserve – all of which have failed us consistently through the years. Both can arguably be blamed for the financial crisis that we face today, and neither offers a productive solution to fix it. Case in point: Last month, Congress gathered to vote on treasury secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion bailout plan… Upon preparing for the vote, Congressmen from all over the country received emails, letters, and phone calls from constituents (you the American people) in an astonishing 9-1 ratio in favor of voting down the proposition. 9-1. That’s 90% of the concerned American public that did not wish to pass this legislation… however, both Senator Obama and Senator McCain voted in favor when the revised bill was presented to the Senate.

The part that gets me is that in spite of the difference of opinion shared by the American public with the two candidates from the two major political establishments, voters are set to head into the booths on Election Day next month presumably to vote for one of the two. The worst part is they will not necessarily be voting for the candidate that they agree with, but against the candidate that they so adamantly disagree with. The ending result is they end up canceling each other out until one of the two mainstream representatives is declared the winner, disregarding the fact that there were other candidates to consider.

Each election process gets worse and worse when it comes to the general public being forced to decide between the lesser of two evils. When our founding fathers drew up the blueprints that became the foundation of our country, they feared the establishment of powerful political parties. Apparently, we took not heed to their warnings, but instead embraced the Democrats and Republicans as the only two “logical” selections to choose between. The general consensus to the uninformed is either you are a Democrat, a Republican, or a Communist. Such is not the case. These two major players are merely one powerful party divided in two. They represent the status quo, and anybody who wishes not to support the status quo is seen as radical and in return shunned by not only the media, but by the Commission on Presidential Debates as well.

The Commission on Presidential Debates was founded in 1987 by the chairman of the Republican Party and the chairman of the Democratic Party. They declared themselves the law of the land for presidential debates and blatantly disregarded the inclusion of other political parties in the debates. This is why the principles of other parties go unknown to the American public. However, we live in a new day in age where just about anybody with a computer and internet access has full capability to research and decide for themselves who they support on the issues that matter most. We have no excuse not to invest a little bit of our time in making a decision that we can stand behind and defend as opposed to defending our decision to ‘not’ vote for the other guy.

So I urge you, and anybody that you may know that this applies to… if you do not fully support the candidate that you plan to vote for next month when you step into that booth, or if you simply plan to vote against ‘the other guy’, then do yourself and your country a favor and at least look into candidates such as Chuck Baldwin of The Constitution Party (the third largest political party in our country), Bob Barr of The Libertarian Party, Ralph Nader of The Independent Party, and Cynthia McKinney of The Green Party. Our country desperately needs to reform our presidential election process and the only way we can realign the way our politics are conducted is if we band together and consider something outside of what we’ve grown accustomed to over the years. Cure your apathy... Knowledge is Power.

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