My Place to Reflect

Wow! What a crazy week this has been. The country certainly seems to be in commotion. Anyway, I wanted to write a few thoughts about voting third party. I've seen political commentary saying that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote, or even worse a vote for the enemy (whoever that might be). For example, this  or this . And the wasted vote interpretation certainly seems to dominate the conversation I'm seeing on Twitter or Facebook. Friend A: ‟I'm voting for [3rd party candidate] .” Friend B: ‟You idiot! That's a vote for [your preferred candidate for devil in chief] .”  And the crazy thing is that both sides are saying the same thing, even in the same state, just about the opposite candidates. Which makes no sense. Hopefully this post makes some sense even though I'm hitting publish at nearly 2 am. Here is the basic reasoning behind calling such a vote wasted. (See this pretty good article from thefederalist.com  — who knew I'd ever say

Our government is not a democracy. It is a republic. We, the people, elect representatives to govern on our behalf, establishing and enforcing laws. In our nation, the government is dominated by the two major political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. Political parties represent a coalition of people with many different beliefs and backgrounds who band together to accomplish goals of government that would not be possible in the absence of this coalition. Compromise is an essential component of the political process when a coalition is formed from a diverse group in which a failure to cooperate makes a majority agreement impossible. The presidential campaign continues and we are one month away from Election Day. The two major candidates and their most vocal supporters are extremely polarizing. Often, the choice is cast as finding the lesser of two evils. The trouble is that different ones of us will identify the greater evil in different ways. Here is my concern, especial