With the disappointing field from the major parties, is this the year for someone like Gary Johnson?
Nevertheless, Nader did draw votes away from Gore in Florida. Exit polls have shown that had Nader not appeared on the ballot, approximately twice as many Nader supporters would have voted for Gore than Bush.
Yet Nader disputes the notion that third party candidates are, or ever can be, spoilers. “All candidates on the ballot try to get votes from one another. Either they are all spoilers, or none of them is,” Nader wrote in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on June 10. “Arrogantly applying that word only to minor party candidates is to treat them as second-class citizens and set them up as scapegoats in close elections.”
Nader argues that constantly voting “strategically” for the “lesser of two evils” perpetuates the unpopular two-party system, with profound consequences: broadly disliked candidates with no incentive to improve or compete, a frustrated and apathetic electorate, and the empowerment of politicians who continue to thwart third party and independent candidacies and stifle voter choice.
Instead, Nader counsels the electorate to vote ‘for’ rather than ‘against’ candidates. “If [people] vote their conscience collectively, they’ll change politics,” he said on C-SPAN on May 4. “If they vote for the least-worst, they’ll never have any leverage.”
Yet the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties are using fear of the other party’s nominee to encourage such strategic voting. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has called the #NeverTrump movement’s effort to recruit an independent candidate a “suicide mission for our country” given the prospect of a Clinton presidency, and the DNC, eager to “unify and take on” Trump, is aggressively trying to appease Sanders and his supporters post-primary season to stymie the appeal of alternatives such as Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
The debate over whether third party and independent candidates are spoilers depends on one’s beliefs about to whom a citizen’s vote belongs: those outside the political duopoly insist that a vote should be cast for the candidate whom the voter wants to see elected, whereas Republicans and Democrats presume that votes “belong” to them, and that votes for an alternative candidate amount to “wasted” votes.
With unfavorability ratings at an all-time high for Clinton and Trump, it is up to voters to decide which approach to voting they will adopt this November: will they vote their conscience for their preferred candidates, or will they reject them as the spoilers that the major parties advertise them to be?
This article was originally published on IVN.us, a non-profit news platform for independent writers, and is reprinted here by permission.
