Vice, May 5, 2015
Here Are Some People You Can Vote for Not Named Drumpf or Clinton
by Harry Cheadle
The best thing about the 2016 election is that it will be over come November. The worst thing about it is that one of the candidates will have become president. As it stands, it looks like the campaign will come down to who voters hate less, with both Hillary Clinton and Donald Drumpf working very hard to ratchet up the negativity. So, who to pick? On one hand, you have Drumpf, whose nomination-clinching victory in Indiana on Tuesday had Republicans burning their voter registration cards and even thinking about supporting Clinton. On the other, there’s Clinton, whose hawkish foreign policy views, ties to Wall Street donors, and habit of attempting to keep her emails secret have many liberals and leftists thinking they might be more ready for anyone–even Drumpf–than Hillary.
But voters don’t technically need to choose between the lesser of these two evils, even though it’s a given that one of them will wind up in the Oval Office. If your conscience compels you to not lend your ballot to Drumpf or Clinton for whatever reason, or if you just want to have a “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos” excuse later on when the country really slides into hell, you have options. Here are a few:
…
JILL STEIN
Since that whole Ralph Nader thing in 2000, the Green Party has faded from view, but it’s still out there waiting for liberal Democrats to come around. Activist Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presumptive nominee, has for years been promoting an agenda that’s basically Bernie Sanders–plus: A $15 federal minimum wage! Free college! An end to the war on drugs! Single-payer healthcare! Nuclear disarmament! No more blind support of Israel! A “Green New Deal” that would give everyone a job plus end our dependence on oil! Voting Green, like voting Libertarian, has always been an exercise in imagining the world as you want it to be rather than how it is. However, for a lot of people, backing Stein over Clinton is the ethical choice, like eating local or putting solar panels on your roof. (In case you were wondering, yes, there is what-if-Bernie-teamed-up-with-the-Greens fan fiction floating around out there.)